Complications of being Roxanne Weasley
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Having officially graduated from Hogwarts, Roxanne finds herself with little to do except hang out with friends and get into arguments with her mum about Roxy's "future". As strange things begin happening, though, Roxy finds that fretting about finding a job may just be the least of her worries. As Roxy struggles with adulthood, she may soon have to struggle for her life.
1. Prologue: Dawn approaches with baby

**Credit for the following story goes to Lydia, for being a great friend and dealing with me texting her about plot ideas at three in the morning; to Georgie, for looking over chapters to find my mistakes; and, of course, to Ms. Rowling, for creating such a wonderful world for us all to explore. As always, I own nothing that is recognised.**

 **Thank you and enjoy.**

 _27 September, 2009_

"How long 'till closing, sir?" his assistant, a twenty-something brunette named Anne, asked when George walked past her towards the till.

"Why? Have a date tonight?" he joked, but Anne only shook her head. She wasn't much for jokes or pranks—ironic, since she worked in wizarding Britain's most prominent joke shop. "We've still got about two hours on the clock. Do you need to leave early?"

"No sir. I've just been feeling a bit under the weather is all."

"I could send you home now—"

"No thanks, sir. It's my job to help you close up, after all. Even if I'm sick, you hired me to perform a job and that is what I'm here to do. I can be sick on my own time." Anne was, if nothing else, dedicated to a fault.

"Alright," George replied with a shrug. If she didn't want to go home, he wasn't going to push her. After all, Anne _was_ one of his hardest workers and had long-since made it past the usual turnover rate of the majority of his employees. "But if you start to feel worse, sit down or something for me, okay? I don't want you throwing up or anything."

"Yes sir." Anne walked away briskly to attend to two young wizards who were eagerly admiring the Puking Pastilles. He smiled fondly as she left, knowing Anne wouldn't have asked to leave if she was bleeding out all over the floor.

George looked around his shop, a sense of pride bursting in his chest; Weasley's Wizard Wheezes had become a prominent fixture in Diagon Alley ever since its inception thirteen years ago. Hundreds of curious shoppers came through every single day, admiring the newest novelties and trinkets that George had in store for the masses.

There had been some days where George had been very close to closing the shop for good—after his brother's passing, he had been inconsolable, refusing to get out of bed or eat. There were still days where he simply had no desire to head downstairs in the morning to open up the shop, and left running the place to Anne, who was incredibly understanding—she had lost an older brother during the war and her mother, a muggleborn, had disappeared and to this day remained unfound.

But for the most part, George was in charge of the store, every single day except for April 1st and May 2nd. Those two days were _his_ to do what he wanted with—he supposed that, in a few short years, he'd have to extend at least a half-day vacation to September 1st as well, but for now, his son wasn't old enough to attend Hogwarts.

The shop had been doing astoundingly well, even better than George could have ever predicted—four years ago, he had successfully bought out Zonko's, a dream of his since he was a teenager, and had done it for two thousand _less_ Galleons than he had expected to have to pay.

Now there were two locations for his increasingly popular joke shop; the main one here in Diagon Alley was personally run by George. He lived above the shop with his wife and young son and had easy access to the store below whenever he needed.

Ron, his younger brother, managed the Hogsmeade location. George knew the second shop was in capable hands. His brother, though initially unsure of himself, had bloomed over the years, and the Hogsmeade location had gone through renovations over the summer, finding itself in need of an expansion.

People like Anne, long-term employees, were rare. George had gone through a number of employees over the years—most were recently graduated Hogwarts kids in need of a decent temporary job.

But George liked to think that he was a good boss to everyone who worked for him, no matter how old or why they wanted the job. And everyone who had worked at the shop had nothing but compliments about him.

Customers were always fawning over Freddie who, at six years old, was already showing signs of taking after his legendary prankster of a father. The customers and employees all loved Freddie, mischievous as he was—he was simply just too cute _not_ to like.

And he and Angelina were expecting their second child any day now—they had been trying for a few years to have another baby, because George couldn't imagine the idea of raising his son as an only child, not when his own childhood was always filled with playmates in the form of siblings.

Life was going well for George; the nightmares were mostly gone. He no longer needed a bottle of Butterbeer before going to bed. He was…he was _happy_. He was content. His family, his workplace— _all_ of it was going exactly how George wanted.

"Dad." George turned, smiling down at his son, who was hiding in the doorway that separated the shop from the flat. The boy was looking around nervously, clearly frightened by something.

George rushed over to the boy, shouting instructions for his assistant, Anne, to take over the till while he was gone. George clapped his hands over Freddie's shoulders, looking the little boy over for injuries. "What's wrong, Freddie? Has something happened?"

"Mummy said to get you. She said the baby's coming and you need to get her to St Mungo's." George's world froze. The baby—the—the—the _baby_? Coming _now_? But there was still—still time, the baby wasn't supposed to come for another—another couple of weeks, why was it—why was it—"Dad?" Freddie leaned up to pat George's cheek. "Dad, we have to help Mummy, c'mon. Mummy needs help, c'mon Dad, c'mon."

"Um…" George couldn't think. "H-hey Anne?" His assistant looked over at him curiously. "Can you close up shop for me when it's time? I'm not going to be here. My wife's gone into labour." It didn't feel like him talking, even as he felt his mouth move.

"Oh!" Anne shrieked happily, attracting the attention of several customers. "Of course, Mr. Weasley! You go on right ahead! Congratulations!"

"C'mon Dad," Freddie said anxiously, tugging on George's sleeve. "Mummy needs you. C'mon, let's _go._ "

He allowed himself to led upstairs in a daze, mind struggling to process _the baby is coming now_. Freddie had been right on time, hadn't he? _Right_ on time. Their second child wasn't supposed to be born until October, it was only the 27th of September now, how—why—was it coming early?

"George?" he heard Angelina groan from the sitting room. George stumbled in to find his wife laying on the sofa, her face twisted in pain as she gripped her protruding stomach. "George, is that you? George, I—I need to get to St Mungo's."

She was breathing heavily, eyes unfocused as she let out a scream that made George twitch. He hated seeing his wife in pain, seeing the way she was hurting. "How—how far apart are contractions, Ange? Remember, Clarissa said not until they're really close? How far apart are they? How far apart, Ange? Ange?" He was losing control, but George couldn't help it.

 _The baby isn't due for another two weeks, the baby isn't due for another two weeks. Why is it coming now? Why is it early? Have we done something wrong? What's going to happen? Oh Merlin, what's going to happen now? The baby isn't due for another two weeks, the baby isn't due for—_

"George!" Angelina screamed, dragging George back to reality. Then, in a much calmer tone, she said, "George, sweetie, can you please stop panicking? Because I'm already panicking and _I'm_ the one going into labour here, remember, dear? Now we really only need _one_ parent to panic, don't we, and since _I'm_ the one whose insides are currently being ripped apart, perhaps _you_ should be the one to maintain a grip on the situation so that I can get the proper attention I need."

"Y-yeah." George shook his head, trying to clear it. He needed to stay calm if he didn't want to mess everything up. "Okay. Okay. Um…how far apart are the contractions, Ange?"

"About three to four minutes," she said heavily, fingers fluttering across her stomach. "I waited as long as I could to get you. I didn't want to pull you away from your job before it was absolutely necessary."

"You could've gotten me sooner."

"Why? You heard what Clarissa said." Clarissa, a mediwitch at St Mungo's and an old friend from Hogwarts, had overseen Freddie's birth and every stage of the pregnancy for their new child as well. Her word was practically golden to them by now. "All you would have been able to do was pace around and panic."

"I guess you're right," George mumbled. "So—so should I take you in now? Are we good to go?"

"The bag is by the door," Angelina replied, pushing herself off the couch slowly, maintaining a firm grip on the arm. She already looked exhausted. "Oh, I've already sent an owl to Ginny—but if you think a Patronus or whatever is faster, then you should probably take care of that—so she can come help with Freddie."

"Y-yeah." Ginny, George's sister, had agreed to come to St Mungo's the second they called on her to watch over Freddie while Angelina gave birth. The women in George's family had very little faith in George's ability to keep it together during the birth of his child.

 _Just because I fainted last time,_ George grumbled to himself as he flung the bag around his shoulder and scooped up Freddie, who was still nervously watching from the doorway. "C'mon, little man," he told the boy, moving to help Angelina stay upright. "We're going to St Mungo's to welcome your new baby brother or sister."

"Baby." Freddie happily snuggled against his father's chest as they stepped into the fireplace, George yelling "St Mungo's!" into the fireplace as Angelina continued to breath heavily. He gripped her hand tightly, giving his wife the most reassuring look he could muster.

"I love you Ange," he said, hoping she could hear him over the roar of green flames. George couldn't imagine how awful she had to be feeling at that moment as the flat disappeared from view; Floo travel made practically _everyone_ sick. "We're gonna be okay, yeah?"

"I'm fine," she murmured, stepping out of the fireplace hurriedly, looking ill. "Or," she gripped her midsection again, grimacing, "rather, I'm _not_ fine, but the Floo isn't the issue here. C'mon, Mr. Weasley, go find me Clarissa."

"George?" Ginny was rushing over, handing her young daughter off to a rather flustered-looking Harry, who was already struggling to keep his sons under control. "Oh Ange, you're really _close_!" She looked down in astonishment at Angelina. "Here George, give me Freddie and go get her to maternity."

"I don't want Dad to leave!" Freddie protested as he was handed off, but then caught sight of four year old James and forgot all about his parents and the incoming baby.

George escorted Angelina over to the receptionist, explaining that his wife was in labour and that they _really_ needed to see Healer Bartley immediately. The receptionist, a little astounded, nodded, casting a wispy Patronus. Two minutes later, Clarissa, already in scrubs, burst out from the main hallway, running over as quickly as she could.

"Oh you two! Couldn't even send me an owl or anything before you got here—this is _just_ like you Ange." The mediwitch led them quickly further into St Mungo's. "C'mon, this way, this way. I'm sure you lot know _exactly_ where maternity is. Merlin knows you've come here enough."

"Nice to see you too, Clare," George joked, laughing weakly as Angelina gave out another groan. He looked nervously over at his wife, who waved George off, protesting that she was fine, there was only a _goddamn person_ trying to claw its way out of her.

"She seems cheery," Clarissa said happily, leading them into a birthing room. "Luckily, we've had this place prepped for a few days now."

"You knew we were coming?"

"No, 'course we didn't _know_. But it's just one of those things we do for patients, getting the rooms prepped a little before the due date. Babies almost never come when we expect them to, so it's better to be ready for situations like this."

"Oh."

He helped one of the mediwizards lay Angelina down, piling pillows behind her head as she groaned again, more loudly this time.

"And now," Clarissa said, grabbing George by the elbow. "It is time for Daddy to go play the waiting game outside with the rest of his family."

"What? Why?" George protested, twisting to see as Angelina murmured something to the closest Healer. "Ange needs me. That's my baby, my baby needs me—"

"George, you _fainted_ last time, remember?"

"I won't this time!"

"Look, we just think it's best for you to stay _outside_ the room for this birth. You were a little…well, a little out of control last time. You'll only worry Angelina—and me—and that'll make bringing the baby out harder than is necessary."

Memories of him going pale with worry every time Angelina groaned or screamed flashed through George's head. "Fine. But the second the baby's born-"

"I'll come get you," Clarissa promised before shoving him from the room. "Now go wait with everyone else and be patient. She's so dilated this should only take a few hours. I'm expecting a quick and easy birth."

George, a bit dazed from how quickly everything had happened, made his way back to the main waiting room, where Ginny and Harry were playing with the kids. His mother and father were already waiting as well, and Molly leapt up when George came over.

"They kicked me out. Said I was too wild last time and that it'd be best for me to wait out," he explained, dropping into one of the chairs. He put his head in his hands and groaned.

"I hope you don't mind, but I've already sent owls off to your brothers," Molly said, scooting over to pat him on the back. "Bill said he'll be here soon, but Percy's currently stuck at work—"

"Of course he is," George muttered. Molly shot him a look but continued on.

"—though Audrey said she'll at least come by with the girls while we wait. I suspect Charlie won't be coming, again, but I suppose that's what you get when your son decides he loves dragons more than his own mother and runs off to Romania."

"Charlie doesn't love dragons more than you Mum," Ginny said, exasperation colouring her voice. "He loves dragons more than _everyone_. Besides, what's the last birth he actually came to see? Albie's? And that was three years ago."

"He was only here for Victoire's and Albus'," Molly grumbled. "He's hardly ever here anymore, even for Christmas. My own _son_."

"Hey Mum? I don't mean to be rude or anything, but can we please focus on the fact that my wife is currently giving birth in another room?" George asked. Arthur opened his mouth as though to tell George off, but Molly only nodded, sniffling slightly.

"Sorry. I suppose I do get a bit carried away about these sorts of things. But I'm a mother—I _always_ worry."

"That you do," George and Ginny said together, and Molly rolled her eyes at them.

"Have you picked out a name yet?" Harry asked—the first thing he'd said the whole time. George glanced over at his brother-in-law. Harry always seemed mildly uncomfortable at family events, despite having been married to Ginny for seven years, and being seen as a part of the family for even longer.

"We don't even know the gender yet, actually. Clarissa says it shouldn't be too much longer, though. Angelina was about ready to burst when we got her here."

It was not a few hours later that the baby was born. It was _thirteen_.

Dawn was breaking when they finally let George in. It was the early morning of September 28th, and for the second time in his life, George had become a father. Clarissa was the one to actually get him, giving him a big grin as she stuck her out into the waiting room.

"How about just Daddy for now?" she said when Molly tried to follow after them. The older woman paused, looking annoyed, but George nodded, eager to see his new son or daughter. "We'll come back for the rest of you after the new parents have had some time."

The head mediwitch smiled as she escorted George to Angelina's room. Clarissa looked tired, bags under her eyes and frizzy hair sticking out from underneath her cap, but she also was excitedly leading George to his wife.

"It's a girl," Clarissa said, bright eyes shining, pausing outside of the birthing room. "A healthy baby girl. 46 centimetres long and weighing a whopping 2.9 kilograms. Not bad, as far as newborns go. And she's certainly very pretty. Healthy lungs, for sure—she was _quite_ the screamer, but she's resting now. Quite exhausting work, being born. We cut the cord, cleaned her, and weighed her before getting you, if you don't mind, considering you _fainted_ last time you were here."

"That was six years ago! Are you _ever_ going to let me live that down?" George protested lightly, but the mediwitch only shook her head, amused, and pushed open the door, letting George into his wife's room.

"She's been demanding to know where you were since the moment we took you out." Clarissa turned her attention to Angelina, who looked up at them from her bed. "Hello, Mrs, Weasley, I've got George back now. If you want, I could give you a little privacy?"

"Yes, please, Clare?" Angelina looked gratefully at her old friend. "What about Freddie, though? Where is he? Is Freddie being taken care of?"

"Freddie's under the supervision of Mrs. Potter right now. We can bring family in one by one or in small groups—or even all at once, if that's what you prefer—but we typically try to let Mummy and Daddy have some alone time with the new baby before everyone else comes storming in here to see. And besides, you've got some thinking to do."

Clarissa smiled at them again, slipping from the room as quietly as she could while George pulled a chair over to Angelina. He looked her over, seeing the exhaustion in her face, the sweat that poured down her cheeks.

She had never been more beautiful to him than she was in that exact moment, dishevelled and in need of a shower. He fell in love with her all over again, like they were twenty years old and sitting on the beach outside his brother's house.

George leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, his hand moving to stroke his daughter's tiny forehead. She looked so fragile, so innocent. The baby twitched slightly at George's touch, but then settled once more against Angelina's chest, mouth opening and closing a few times.

"What are we going to name her?" Angelina asked, looking down at the beautiful little girl in her arms. George smiled at the sleeping newborn; he could already see himself in eleven years, seeing his daughter off for her first at Hogwarts. "We never did pick out a name, did we George? Maybe that would've been smarter, maybe we should've—"

"Shh," George said, kissing her again. "Everything's okay, Ange. It's _okay_. We're naming her right now, aren't we? We're going to give our daughter the best name ever. I promise. It'll be beautiful, just like her. Just like _you_."

"Git," Angelina replied, laughing. "Well, we certainly can't name her Molly, now can we?" Percy had already taken the name for his own daughter, his firstborn child, eight years previous. "And she doesn't look very much like a Stephanie to me." Stephanie—the name of Ange's mother. "Besides that, I think tying our _first_ kid to somebody else was enough for me. Don't you think she should have an original name?"

George nodded, deep in thought. He stood, pacing the room, walking from Ange's bed to the window, where he stopped, looking out at the slowly rising sun. That's when he had an idea—a name, the perfect name for his baby girl, because it was just as beautiful as she was, as she would be one day.

"Roxanne," he murmured, turning to look at Angelina, a smile breaking out on his face. "We should call her Roxanne. It means dawn, bright—just like her. What do you think? Roxanne, Roxanne, Roxanne Weasley." He repeated the name a few more times, testing it out, liking the way the name sounded. "Roxanne Weasley? Is that who she is?"

"I like the name Roxanne," Angelina replied. "Roxy for short, I suppose. It's very pretty. And—and her middle name? What do you think?"

"Oh, well I was thinking perhaps Anne or something along those lines, but if you wanted something else..."

His wife narrowed her eyes at him. "No, definitely not Anne. What about Raechell? Roxanne Raechell Weasley, how does that sound?"

"Alright, then, we're agreed. Roxanne Raechell Weasley." They were grinning at each other like mad people, repeating the name back and forth, trying it, tasting it, and exploring their daughter's new name like blind people given sight for the first time in their lives. The name sounded like promises, like potential, like happiness. The new parents looked down at their daughter, and they decided. "Roxanne Raechell Weasley. That's who you are."

The girl named Roxanne Raechell Weasley only cooed quietly in response, unaware of the decision that had just been made that would change her life forever.


	2. Graduation: Part 1

_19 years later_

 _21 June, 2028_

"Graduation day!" Gwen yelled, leaping from her bed, much to the annoyance of her room-mates. Gwenyth Cauldwell had never been much of a cheerful or excitable person up until recently, when the exhilaration of nearly having finished with school for good appeared to finally have caught up with her.

The other Slytherin girls groaned—Roxanne was fairly certain she heard the quiet thump of a pillow hitting the floor in a missed attempt at hitting Gwen in the face—but Gwen only began to cheerily hum to herself as she dashed into their shared lavatory to prepare for the day.

"I bloody _swear_ , she's made even me happy we're getting out today," grumbled Joanna Bartley, who had slept next to Roxanne for the past seven years. "I mean, for fuck's sake, how can Gwen have gone from Slytherin grump to Miss Bubbles and Sunshine?"

"Mm," Roxanne replied, sitting up. "I dunno, Jo, maybe all those Cheering Charms finally got to Gwen's head, or the stress of N.E.W.T.S. made her lose it for good."

"Certainly did _me_ in, that's for fucking sure."

Roxanne nodded absent-mindedly, turning her attention to the picture on her dresser; a friendly boy with a lop-sided grin waved up at her. The boy was, at most, nineteen or twenty, and looked quite similar to Roxanne—which was understandable, as the boy in the picture was Roxanne's older brother, Freddie Weasley.

Roxanne sighed as Freddie continued to wave happily up at her, wondering how it was that she was expected to have everything packed up by the time her mum arrived for the graduation ceremony. She had collected so many things over the past seven years, it was ridiculous to believe she'd have everything ready in time.

"Perhaps you should've started sooner Roxy," Jo replied when Roxanne conveyed her feelings to the girl. Jo had been packed since Monday, because she was the _responsible one_ , the one who always made sure everyone else was prepared for class or holidays or whatever else Jo could think of to prepare for.

Roxy, on the other hand, took a much more relaxed approach to life—case in point, that she had yet to pack up a single item yet, despite the fact that parents would be arriving by noon and it was—oh, _fucking Merlin_ , was it already so late?—eight-thirty.

She scrambled to get up, wondering how rude it would be of her if she kicked the now-singing Gwen from the shower, but then decided against it. Getting into an argument with a dorm-mate over showers? And on the last day? Roxy could be childish sometimes, but never _petty_.

Or at least not without good reason.

"So are your cousins coming by then, Roxy?" Aleah Vanwert asked innocently from her own bed, where she had been finishing up her morning routine of brushing her hair one hundred times, something she swore was just a Muggle custom picked up from her next-door neighbour and not a sure sign that she was slowly going mad.

"Dunno, I suppose they will," Roxy replied, noticing the slight blush that crept across Aleah's face at the mention of Roxy's cousins. "I mean, it's sort of a Weasley tradition, attending each other's graduation ceremonies each time. I always went to theirs'."

Aleah was, of course, not the first girl to have a weird crush on some cousin of Roxy's. Rox had, in fact, spent much of her Hogwarts years dealing with questions from the other girls, who wanted to know all about Louis and James and Albus.

A few times, people had even approached to ask about her _brother_ , which had been massively weird, but most of the questions about him had stopped after her second year, luckily. She didn't think she could have handled answering some love-sick girl about Freddie's personal life.

"Is it weird—" Aleah started, and then fell silent when Jo frantically attempted to shush her. Roxy noticed, though, because she had been expecting the question to come up eventually.

"Mum'll be there for me," Roxy said with a shrug. "At least I'll have that, yeah?"

"Yeah," Aleah replied, giving Roxy a smile that tried to refrain from containing pity—she, as usual, failed miserably.

"Mum's always been there for me, you know. And I'm glad, really, that everyone will be coming up to see me. Emily's even bringing Faith, so I'll finally get to meet her."

"Oh?" Aleah's eyes went wide. "That'll be nice, won't it? How old is she now? Three?"

"Four, I think."

"Wow, four? It's already been so _long_?"

" _Aleah_ ," Jo said around a cough, shooting her dorm-mate another warning glance. Aleah blushed again and looked down at her hands.

The dorm had fallen awkwardly silent, with no one wanting to say anything, until the lavatory door burst open and Gwen came bounding back out.

"Shower's open for anyone who wants it!" she practically sang, oblivious to the uncomfortable tension between her dorm-mates. "Has anyone woken up Cheyenne and Lyric? We haven't got _that_ much time, you know."

"Yeah, I'll do that," Jo replied, sliding off of her bed to wake up the other two girls who shared their dorm. Roxy was surprised to see they were still asleep, given how noisy Gwen had been, but Cheyenne _was_ a heavy sleeper, and Lyric was probably just faking sleep in the hopes that they'd leave her alone.

"I'll take the lav next, if no one else minds," Roxy said, heading for the door, glad for the chance to exit the shared room. She knew Aleah didn't _mean_ to be intrusive, but that didn't make her questions sting any less.

Roxy tried to hurry through her morning routine, knowing the other girls would grow restless and grumble at her if she took too long to get ready. But, as she was brushing her teeth, Roxy couldn't help but look at herself in the mirror.

She was a _tiny_ girl—at only one hundred and forty-seven centimetres, she was the shortest of her cousins—with a mess of curly dark hair with the slightest red hue to it, and eyes that changed from brown to blue depending on the lighting. Roxy was also rather slender, which had led to several worried discussions between her parents about her eating habits when Roxy was younger, but Roxy had alwaysbeen naturally thin, much to her dorm-mates annoyance.

When she finally finished, Roxy scurried back into the dorm to see her last two dorm-mates had finally gotten out of bed and were grumpily getting themselves ready for the day. Cheyenne wordlessly headed into the lavatory while Lyric sighed endlessly as she brushed her hair.

"I decided to start packing for you, since I'm already set," Jo said when Roxy noticed her trunk had been opened, her belongings half-packed, the contents settled in much more neatly than Roxy had ever been able to manage.

"Oh, thanks Jo," Roxy said, and Jo gave her a small smile as Roxy finished up the job by tossing everything else into the trunk. Soon enough, the only thing left was the picture of her brother, which Roxy gave one last look before tossing it into the trunk along with everything else.

She really didn't feel like letting Freddie overshadow her day.

* * *

Roxy headed towards the Great Hall, where the graduation ceremony would take place, talking with Jo and Aleah about how weird it would be to wake up tomorrow— _tomorrow,_ for Merlin's sake!—and no longer be Hogwarts students.

"Oh, Roxanne, _darling Roxy_!"

The next thing she knew, Roxanne's vision was full of red hair as her cousin Lily grabbed Roxy into a tight hug, threatening to topple the short girl over.

"Lily, you're suffocating me," Roxy said, letting out an airy laugh when Lily squeezed her tightly before finally letting go. "You might've broken a rib there, Lils."

"Sorry, Rox," Lily said, grinning at her cousin. "I guess I got a bit out of hand—I was just so _excited_ to see you again! It's been so long."

"We saw each other at Christmas, Lils."

"Ages and ages ago," Lily said, waving her hand impatiently. "I've broken up with _two_ boyfriends since then, you know."

"Have you?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that, you know how I am. The famous Lily Potter, letting herself be tied down for more than a few months? Imagine the scandal _that_ would start."

"Oh, yes, _Witch Weekly_ would have a field day with you, I imagine." Roxy laughed, imagining the ridiculous stories that had popped up in the past about Lily's previous relationships. "I suppose they'd suspect you're planning _marriage_ next."

"How dreadful," Lily replied, looking horrified. Though she was only twenty, Lily had made it perfectly clear she had _no_ intentions of marrying— _ever_ —and had made it her solemn vow that she would never date a boy for more than ninety days.

"So who is it now?" Roxy asked curiously. "Last time I checked, you were going out with…Rahul Vedatha, is that right?"

"Oh, him? Like I said, _ages_ ago."

"What was wrong with Rahul? I thought he was pretty cute."

"Try _boring_ with a capital B, Roxy. It was like dating Uncle Percy—all he ever wanted to talk about his job as a printer. He had _no_ personality at all."

"Then why'd you date him, then?" Roxy couldn't contain her laughter at Lily's antics. Her cousin had always been a little ridiculous at times, but she was especially bad when it came to partners.

"Oh, I don't really recall," Lily said vaguely, sounding bored. "But Rahul is in the past. _Now_ it's all about Tolkien."

"As in Smith?" Roxy asked, shocked. If she recalled correctly, Tolkien was the youngest of five, a year older than Lily. Most importantly, he'd been in Slytherin and had gained a reputation as rather, well, _sleazy._ Roxanne remembered seeing him around a few of the more… _unsavoury_ parties she had attended with Jo."I didn't peg him as your type, Lils."

"Oh, Rox, _everyone's_ my type, remember? Besides, I rather like the idea of dating a bad boy. Daddy doesn't approve—of course—but he can't really say much, now can he?"

"Mm," Roxy replied quietly. She secretly suspected that Uncle Harry, who was the Head Auror for the Ministry of Magic, could probably say and do whatever he wanted if he felt like stopping Smith from dating his daughter, but figured that right now wasn't the best time to get into that argument with Lily.

"But that's not important. What _is_ important is that a little birdy told me that you have a boyfriend?" Lily raised her eyebrows.

"A little birdy?" Roxy laughed. "Do you mean Teddy? Because he's not exactly little—"

" _Roxy_ ," Lily sighed. "Off-topic. It doesn't matter who told me. I just want to know—is it true? What's his name? Is he cute?"

"Kieran? He's pretty cute, yeah."

"Wait!" Lily gawked at Roxy, eyes widening comically. "You're dating _Kieran Kanallakan_? Why didn't you tell me? He's majorly adorable, Rox! If you had told me— _Kieran_? How long has this been going on?"

"Oh, since January, I guess? I mean, I just didn't think it was really that important, you know? We're not entirely serious or anything, at least I don't feel like we are and—"

"Roxanne Weasley!" she heard her mother yell, and Roxy turned to watch as the woman marched over with a grin on her face. "Oh, Roxanne, I'm so _proud_ of you!"

Roxy blushed when a few of the other seventh years looked over in curiosity. Her mum—a former professional Quidditch player—had never really learned how to speak _quietly_ , even when Roxy begged her to keep it down.

Her mum swept Roxy into a hug, still going on about how proud she was of her daughter; Lily, who seemed to be made uncomfortable by her aunt's almost smothering levels of affection, coughed awkwardly, making some excuse about wanting to congratulate one of her fellow Gryffindors that she remembered.

"But you'll tell me all about Kieran later, right Roxy?" Lily said before flouncing off, making Roxy blush an even darker red, hoping her mum was too caught up in the moment to properly pay attention to what Lily said.

Roxy, finally pulling away from the hug, looked into her mum's eyes, unsure of what, exactly, she was trying to even find. Her mum _seemed_ healthy enough, stable enough—she certainly didn't seem to want to stop beaming down at Roxy any time soon.

"You know, I _was_ worried when you said you didn't feel like coming home for Easter. I guess I'd just gotten so used to being able to rely on you, r cousins to check up on you, and you came home last year, but when you wrote about staying here instead, well, I just wasn't sure what to think. It rather felt like—"

"Mum," Roxy said, laughing. "You're babbling again. Besides, I'm _fine_ , honestly. Like I said in my letter, I just wanted to spend my last Easter hols here at Hogwarts."

Her mum nodded uncertainly, looking around at all the other families who had come to see the graduation of the class of 2028. Roxy noticed Joanne a few metres away, already in an argument with her father.

"You know, I suppose I _have_ been just a bit over-protective, especially as of late, but you're my little girl, Roxy, I live to worry about you—oh, is that Neville? He must be proud of Matilda. First of the class and all," her mum said with a pointed glance at Roxy, who only shrugged.

Professor Longbottom was, in fact, _very_ proud of his daughter, as Roxy could—unfortunately—attest to, having heard him telling several people all about how Matilda had topped the class. Matilda Longbottom. A Ravenclaw to Roxy's Slytherin; their parents had once assumed the two girls would get along fabulously, especially since they were the closest in age.

But Matilda was, in Roxy's opinion, a snooty, stuck-up, know-it-all with no sense of humour. She had been a prefect _and_ Head Girl, for Merlin's sake, positions that were no doubt helped by the fact that her father was the deputy headmaster.

(Not that Roxy would _ever_ accuse Professor Longbottom of nepotism, of course.)

According to Matilda, Roy was a brooding psychopath who had 'future dark witch' written all over her. And only _just_ because Roxy had once threatened to stab Matilda with her stirring rod in potions class.

Well, there was also the fact that Roxy had made it her personal mission to mess with Matilda every chance she got, often charming the girl's hair absurd colours or making snide comments every time Matilda spoke in class. And the time that Roxy had made it begin snowing during one particularly boring History of Magic class, which had cost her twenty points and two weeks detention.

Suffice to say, Roxy was different from Matilda in every way—which was something she was more than pleased to bring up every time her mum, or anyone else, compared the two girls.

"You know, Mum, I did still end up in the top ten," Roxy said loudly. "So I'm not a _complete_ disappointment."

"No one's calling you a disappointment, Roxanne," her mother replied with a sigh.

Roxanne had to bite her tongue to refrain from snapping _oh, yeah?_ She didn't want to be frustrated, not with her mum, not on her graduation day, but she _hated_ being compared to Matilda Longbottom.

"Although, I do wish you could have tried a _little_ harder. I mean, tenth out forty-five isn't bad, but are you sure you were always trying your best, Roxanne? Your brother—"

Roxy tuned her mum out at that point. If there was one person she hated being compared to more than Longbottom, it was her brother. _Freddie_ had been popular. _Freddie_ had been Captain for Gryffindor his sixth and seventh years. _Freddie_ had made eight N.E.W.T.S. and ranked third overall in his year. _Freddie_ had plans and goals for himself after graduation—become the beater for Puddlemere United until he couldn't play anymore, and then take over the joke shop from Dad.

She might have once looked up to her older brother in awe—just one more adoring fan of the great Freddie Weasley—but she was eighteen now, _not_ eight. She wasn't going to compare everything she did against what _Freddie_ had done when he was her age.

"—and that actually reminds me, Roxanne, your hair has simply gotten _completely_ out of control. It's so long now. Are you sure you wouldn't like me to cut it? I think it'd look nice shorter. Oh, look, Neville's heading over here. Hello, Professor Longbottom!" Her mum waved at the professor, who smiled as he made his way over.

"Ange," Professor Longbottom said warmly. "It's nice to see you again." He put an arm around Roxy, giving the girl a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. "We're all very proud of Ms. Weasley here. She's been working particularly hard these past seven years, and I think it really does show."

"Oh, well, she's naturally gifted of course—gets that from her parents. You know, _I_ was in the top _five_ in my year. And George, well." Her mum and Professor Longbottom chuckled, which made Roxy want to scream. How could Mum act so _casually_ about everything? How could she—

"Are you okay, Ms. Weasley?" Professor Longbottom asked suddenly, looking down at the way Roxy was clenching her fists.

"Of course, Professor Longbottom," she replied, doing her best to remain just as cheerful as everyone else here. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Roxanne," her mother said in a warning tone, but Roxy only ignored her and wriggled from Professor Longbottom's grasp. She suddenly wasn't so happy that her mum had shown up for graduation.

"I'm just gonna go, uh, talk to the cousins, okay, Mum?" Roxy said, not waiting around for answer as she hurried off, pretending to be in search of Albus or Louis, but in reality hoping that no one would notice if she slipped outside and went off to the lake for the rest of the day.

"Rox!" she heard someone yell from behind her. Roxy didn't feel like dealing with anyone at the moment, though, and only sped up. "Rox! Roxy! Hey, why're you—hey, _Roxy_!"

A large hand fell on Roxy's shoulder, spinning her around so that she was staring at her boyfriend—or, more accurately, staring at his _chest_ , because Kieran was incredibly tall. At a hundred and ninety-five centimetres, Kieran was more than fifty centimetres taller than Roxy, part of why she had always thought he was so cute; Kieran definitely had the role of the friendly giant down to perfection.

Kieran gave Roxy a worried glance-over, right hand still gripped on her shoulder while the left one began calmly stroking her arm.

"What's wrong, Rox? You look pretty pissed about something. Was it Longbottom again, because I _can_ fight her if you want—I don't care if she's a girl."

"Not entirely," Roxy sighed. "It's just Mum again. You know, _comparing_. She's disappointed, I think, because she was top five when she was in school, and so was Freddie and I'm…I'm barely top ten. If Dad hadn't dropped out, I'm sure _he_ would've been top five as well. All my family's always been so successful, and I'm just…not."

"Hey, that's not true, Rox," Kieran said in a comforting voice. "You're totally successful. So what if you're not top five? You still did really well, especially with our class being even larger than most years."

"Easy for you to say, _number three_."

"I mean it, _number ten_. You're a bloody genius, fuck what your test scores say."

Roxy shook her head, but she couldn't help but smile anyway. Kieran always knew how to make her feel better. "Thanks, babe. You're really sweet."

"Sweet enough to earn a kiss?"

"Always," she said with a laugh, as Kieran bent down to kiss Roxy. She felt herself melt into his large chest, his warm handed lowering towards her bum—

"Oh, yech," someone groaned, making Roxy jump away from Kieran in shock. It was her cousin James, with that stupid grin of his. "Why do I always manage to walk onto my cousins snogging their partner's brains out? It's bloody _disgusting_."

"Hello, James," Kieran said with amusement. James pretended to tip his hat in response before turning his attention back to Roxy.

"So, little miss graduate, what're you and lover-boy doing so far away from your seats? The ceremony's going to begin any moment, and what _would_ Aunt Ange think if the two of you had to rush back at the last minute?"

"Stuff it, James."

"Such hostility, Roxy!" James said, but he was chuckling, shaking his head at Roxy like she was an especially amusing pet performing tricks. Roxy was about to retort—angered by his almost _condescending_ attitude towards her—when she noticed Professor Shrever calling for the attention of the seventh years and their families.

The graduation ceremony was beginning.


	3. Graduation: Part 2

When they had been only measly first years on their first day, the names were called alphabetically and by last name, leaving Roxanne as the second-to-last person called upon. The only one after her had been Gale Wedgewood, a fellow Slytherin. But now, for graduation, they were called up by their class rank, as though to hammer home just how _important_ their placement had been while at school.

Before the actual handing out of their diplomas, though, there was the _endless_ speeches to get through. A speech from Minister Kingsley about their bright futures; a speech from Professor Shrever about how proud she was of them; a speech from Professor Longbottom about expectations in the real world. And then, just as Roxy was considering bolting or dying of boredom, came the last speech, the one she had been dreading the most.

The top of the class always spoken just before the diplomas were handed out, and Roxy wrinkled her nose as Matilda Longbottom pranced up to the raised stage usually reserved for the teachers' seating at dinner.

"Oh good," Jo whispered in Roxy's ear. She was number eleven, right after Roxy, and was thus stuck in the seat just behind her. "I'm so _glad_ that we all get to listen to Miss Priss lecture us about _our_ futures, like we don't all know she's going to get knocked up by Myles as soon as she can."

Roxy snorted, looking down the row, where Miles Richards—class rank: four, reputation: suck-up supreme—was sitting. He appeared almost enraptured by his girlfriend's speech, hanging off of her every word as though she were delivering a message from the Founders themselves.

"Merlin, what a tosser," Roxanne muttered. "Any time Matilda says jump, Miles always asks 'how high?'. I swear, he may be a Ravenclaw, and he may be top of the class, but Miles Richards is still the _daftest_ boy I know."

"More than Marvin Ingram?"

 _Oh, Merlin, don't remind me_. Marvin Ingram was _the_ lowest ranked student in their year. A Gryffindor, he wasn't terribly bright, having only passed his courses through a mixture of pity from his classmates and Marvin's inability to keep himself from looking off of other students' work.

Unfortunately, Marvin didn't seem to realise that not only was he lacking the brains to do much more than sit at home all day, he wasn't terribly attractive either. He had a bulbous nose, crooked teeth, and a bad case of acne that never seemed to go down.

He thought he was attractive enough to catch the eye of Roxy—and had, in fact, been bothering her all term, demanding to know why she had agreed to go with _Kanallakan_ to Hogsmeade instead of him for Valentine's Day.

Roxanne had told him off—but, hey, what's the point of being a Slytherin if you can't be rude to people sometimes—but Marvin still asked her out from time to time, no matter how many times she said no.

Jo thought it was hilarious. Roxanne just couldn't wait to get away from him.

"My fellow seventh years," Matilda began, looking out at everyone gathered with a serene, calming look that had fooled many adults in the past into believing that Matilda Longbottom was as innocent as a newborn.

"Oh, Merlin, here we go," Jo whispered.

"My fellow seventh years, today marks our last day here at Hogwarts. After this, we will no longer wander these halls, or attend classes. We will not cheer at games, eat delicious meals, or explore the grounds. The library doors have been closed to us. Some people here, you will never see again. Some of those are currently your best friends, others are your worst enemies—" at this, Roxy _swore_ Matilda looked straight at her. "—but no matter what, we must always remember this one thing: we _are_ Hogwarts. From the lowliest of us to those who will become high-ranking officials at the Ministry, we are Hogwarts. From those who will be dead within a year to those will be alive in one hundred years, we are Hogwarts. From Slytherin to Gryffindor, Hufflepuff to Ravenclaw, _we are Hogwarts_. Do not forget who you are or where you came from. Do not forget those who helped you to reach your goals, to move past expectations. _Do not forget Hogwarts_. To forget, to disregard and discard, is to allow the horrors of the past to return. So, my fellow graduates, as we receive our diplomas and prepare for tomorrow, I urge you to depart today with this in mind: we make Hogwarts what it is—but Hogwarts is also inside each of us and will be for the rest of our lives. Thank you."

People cheered as Matilda stepped off the stage, quickly replaced by her father and Professor Shrever; Miles appeared determined to clap the loudest of anyone, practically bouncing in seat to show his enthusiasm.

"Suck-up _gi-iit_ , does anything for some _ta-aaail_. Shame Miss Priss is too big of a prude to ever put out," Jo muttered in a sing-song voice, and Roxanne snorted. "What the fuck's with Longbottom? ' _Hogwarts is inside of each of us_.' Like, what the fuck does that mean?"

Roxy only shook her head, not wanting to get into a discussion about Matilda fucking Longbottom's absurd attempts at philosophy. In fact, she'd prefer never to hear the name Matilda Longbottom again after today.

"Students are called up by their rank. They will receive their diploma from our deputy headmaster, Professor Longbottom, and then shake both his and my hand. Pictures are taken only _after_ all awards have been handed out. We thank you for your cooperation," Professor Shrever said, her voice clipped and smart.

"Matilda Longbottom," Professor Longbottom announced, as Professor Flitwick waved for the choir, who began singing the school song slowly. "Recognitions include placing first in her year; being awarded Head Girl in her seventh year; being awarded the position of Prefect in her fifth and sixth years; placing first in Herbology, Transfiguration, Arithmancy, Charms…"

As Professor Longbottom continued on, the other seventh years stood up, each waiting for _their_ name to be called and for _their_ accomplishments to be read aloud. Roxy noticed a few cameras popping, despite Professor Shrever's request, and she couldn't help but wonder if one of those cameras belonged to her mum.

"Roxanne Weasley," Professor Longbottom called, making Roxy jump. Were they really already on her? "Recognitions include placing tenth in her year; placing in first in Potions overall, as well as ranking third in Defence Against the Dark Arts and Charms. She was a Beater for Slytherin from her third to her seventh year. Roxanne currently is undecided for her future plans. Thank you, Roxanne Weasley, for your time here at Hogwarts."

"Congratulations, Ms. Weasley," Professor Longbottom said when Roxy took the diploma from him—which was magically sealed and would open to her wand only. He smiled, and Roxy reciprocated the action, but something about his smile seemed off to her, like his congratulations were not entirely heartfelt.

Roxy shook it off as paranoia, but she was quick to hurry on to Professor Shrever.

"Congratulations, Ms. Weasley," echoed Professor Shrever, shaking Roxy's hand. "You did excellently this year, we're all extremely proud of you."

"Thanks, Professor," Roxy mumbled, eager to get off the platform and back to her seat. She could swear she felt eyes staring into the back of her skull, and was afraid to turn around to see if it was Professor Longbottom.

"Really, Roxanne," Professor Shrever said—and it was the first time she had ever called Roxy by anything except Ms. Weasley. "We are _all_ just so proud of you. I hope you are entirely successful in whatever endeavours you choose."

"Um, thanks, Professor." She hurried off the stage, now rather thrown off. Why were her professors acting so oddly? Why did she feel like someone was watching her—someone interested in more than just observing the ceremony? As though they were assessing her, determining her skill level, her ability to survive, her—

 _Stop it, Roxy_ , she told herself. _You're turning into Uncle Harry. Paranoid as fuck, convinced there's dark wizards around every corner. Nothing's going to happen. You're only being stared at because_ everyone's _being stared at. This is a ceremony, people are_ supposed _to watch you._

Yet she couldn't shake off the feeling that whoever was looking at her wasn't just watching as Roxy sat down in her seat.

* * *

"Congratulations again, Roxanne," Mrs. Kanallakan said. Roxy thanked her, wishing she could get away. Mrs. Kanallakan always seemed convinced that Roxy was about to rob her blind or something equally ridiculous, and the woman's condescending tone made Roxy irritated.

Kieran gave her one last kiss on the cheek before he and his family—so much smaller and organised than her own—walked towards the doors.

Roxy made her way over to where her family was gathered, observing for a few moments as Lily chased James around, screaming at him, while Rose loudly argued with her father over something that Roxy didn't care to listen in on. She sighed, looking around for her mother amongst the gaggle of Weasley mums.

"Did you want me to come with you?" her mum asked when Roxy told her she had to grab her trunk before they could leave. "I'd be happy to come along, if you want. I've never seen the inside of the Slytherin dorms—"

"I'll be fine, Mum. You stay here, I'll be right back, okay?" She looked at her mum, and for a second, Roxy would _swear_ she saw hurt in her mother's eyes; she shook her head, blinking until she could focus again. The glimmer in her mother's eyes was gone, replaced with contentment.

Her mum smiled. "Alright, dear. Hurry, though, Grandmum Molly is throwing you a big dinner and it'd be rude to be late to your own celebration."

"Yes, Mum. I'll be back." She walked quickly off into the direction of the Slytherin dorms, half-expecting that, if she were to turn around, her mum would be following after. She had only gotten more watchful of Roxy over the years.

" _Occupari nutantem fortunam_ ," she told the wall, nodding respectfully when the passage opened for her. The dorms, green and dark, were oddly—eerily—empty. The younger students had all departed for the train while the graduation ceremony was occurring, and the seventh years were all still in the Great Hall or were leaving.

She made her way to the girls' dormitory, thrown off by how loud her actions seemed now that there was no one else around to make noise. How strange it must have been to be a ghost—when there _had_ been ghosts at Hogwarts, at least—to wander these empty rooms day after day, year after year, with nothing to do until the students returned in the fall.

Roxy stopped in the doorway of her dorm, the feeling of paranoia from earlier washing over her, though it was much more intense this time. _Someone_ had been in this room recently, someone who didn't belong. She didn't know how she knew, but Roxy could just sense that someone had come into their dorm that shouldn't have been here.

"Hello?" she called, slipping her wand from her back pocket. "I'm armed, so if you're planning on attacking me, just know I won't be going without a fight."

No one answered, and she continued further into the room hesitantly, expecting something to jump at her at any moment. But Roxy made it over to her trunk without incident and let out a sigh that verged on laughter.

If someone had been in here, they were gone now.

She moved to charm her trunk, but then Roxy's eyes fell on her nightstand, and she felt her heart thudding in her chest. The picture of her brother, which she could have sworn she had thrown into her trunk just a few hours ago, was sitting on the nightstand. Freddie continued to wave merrily at her as Roxy gaped.

How was this possible? She had locked her trunk with anti-theft charms—not to mention the difficulty of getting _into_ the Slytherin dorms and then into the girls' room. But someone had just passed through countless security measures to—to what? Mess with her picture? Play a last-minute joke on her?

Roxy let out a short laugh, now on the edge of hysterics. "I'm being ridiculous again, that's all. Overactive imagination and poor memory. Obviously, I must have forgotten to put the picture away with everything else and then forgot that I forgot. There's no way someone _broke in_. that would be silly. I'm just being paranoid."

"Rox?" she heard from the door, making Roxy nearly jump from her skin. "Oh, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. But your mum's ready to go—she said something about a dinner party at your grandmum's?"

"Thanks, Jo," Roxy said, unlocking her trunk and sweeping the picture inside. She waved her wand, locking the whole thing and, with a sigh, turned back to her dorm-mate of seven years. "I just…y'know, being a bit jumpy again."

"Yeah, you look really shaken. Is everything okay?"

Roxy looked away, briefly considering telling Jo about her suspicions that someone had broken in, but then she shook her head. Better to just let it alone; after all, her feelings were probably nothing anyway. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's probably just 'cause, y'know, leaving Hogwarts and all. Very emotional. Very nerve-wracking."

"I'm with you on that for sure," Jo said with a laugh, levitating her own trunk as well as Roxy's. "Come on, Rox, let's go. Don't want to keep world-famous Ange Weasley waiting for too long. Say, do you think she'd sign something for me? I bet it'd be worth hundreds—or something from your Uncle Harry, that'd be even better!"

Rox stared at Jo in disbelief, but the other girl only burst into laughter.

"You should _see_ the look on your face! Fucking Merlin, did you think I was serious, Rox? I've had _Christmas dinner_ with both of them. It's kind've hard to be in awe of someone after you've seen them spill gravy on their jumper."

Roxy smiled, remembering a few years ago, when Uncle Harry had spilt the whole gravy boat down his front in his eagerness to get up; he had been called, rather last-minute to Aunt Ginny's displeasure, onto a mission and was rushing through good-byes when he had up-ended the gravy boat.

"Yeah, I suppose it _is_ rather difficult to see them as the 'heroes of the war' after that." They walked together in comfortable silence back to the Great Hall, where Mum was, as expected, waiting impatiently, a displeased look on her face.

"You took your time, Roxanne. We've made everyone else wait long enough, it's time to go _now_ ," Mum snapped, making Roxy blush. She didn't want Jo to see her mum ordering Roxy around, not when she'd spent most of her time at Hogwarts creating an image of not giving a fuck about rules set by the teachers.

"Sorry, Mum," she mumbled. "See you around, Jo."

"Yeah. Don't forget to write, Rox. I _know_ you know my address now, so don't bullshit me, got it? And don't you dare forget either." Jo was grinning.

Roxy hugged her as Mum grabbed Roxy's trunk, still grumbling about how they should have been at Grandmum Molly's ten minutes ago.

* * *

"So how is it?" her cousin Louis asked, grinning at Roxy from across the table. The celebration was in full swing, with enough food for the whole family laid out across Grandmum Molly's (admittedly magically enlarged) table.

"How's what?"

"Being an officially graduated member of society, of course."

"Oh." Roxy stared down at the Butterbeer in her hands, uncertain, suddenly, how to answer. "It's…alright, I suppose."

"Come on, you've got to feel _something_ ," Louis insisted, draining his own bottle. "Excitement, nervousness, elation at getting away from all those pricks? Anything at all?"

"Leave her alone, Louis," said Victoire, who had been quietly comforting her young son William, throughout the party. "She's only been graduated for a few hours, I'm sure Roxy's still in shock mode, just like the rest of us were at first."

"Shocked? Me?" Louis scoffed, but Victoire only raised an eyebrow at him.

"If I recall correctly, you _were_ the one who nearly threw up all over Professor Shrever's shoes when you went to shake her hand."

Louis scoffed again, though Roxy noticed that he stopped pushing her for an answering after that, instead choosing to nurse the empty bottle in his hands.

"Dunno why you even came to the party in the first place," he grumbled, peeling the sticker off of his drink. "I mean, you've got kids, you can't drink anything, and you haven't moved from this seat since you got here."

"Emily's here, and she brought Faith," Victoire pointed out.

"Yeah, but Faith and Emily are only here for Aunt Ange's benefit. They aren't here to _celebrate_."

Victoire got a determined look in her eye. "Well, I _am_ ," she insisted, grabbing a bottle of Butterbeer from the centre of the table and taking a sip. "And I bloody well can drink if I want to. I'm not pregnant anymore."

"That's the spirit, sis" Louis said, grinning. "Hey, where're you going, Rox?"

Roxy had stood up, abandoning her half-finished drink. "I think I'm gonna say hi to Faith," she said quietly. Victoire and Louis glanced at each other behind Roxy's back, but said nothing as she made her way into the sitting room.

Emily was sitting on a faded couch cushion in the midst of her family's partying, holding her daughter in her lap and looking thoroughly out of place. Roxy settled down next to her, giving Emily a tense smile.

Roxy knew she was supposed to like Emily, because she was Faith's mum, but every time Roxy saw the older girl, her stomach churned and her throat closed up. It was hard to see Emily and not be reminded of everything that had happened.

Emily was the first one to break the silence with an awkward, "Hey."

"Hey," Roxy echoed, looking down at her shoes. It was weird, sitting so close to Faith, whom she had only met for the first time today. It was like staring down the rabbit-hole from _Alice in Wonderland_ —everything _seemed_ normal enough about Faith, but underneath, it was just too peculiar.

"Would you like to hold her?" Emily asked, indicating Faith. Roxy raised an eyebrow at her. Faith was, after all, not an infant, but a four year old girl. Emily shrugged. "She likes being held. Don't you Faith?"

"Yeah," the girl mumbled in a sleepy voice, her eyelids drooping. "Like being held."

"She looks like you," Roxy said nervously, reaching out to run a hand through the girl's thick dark curls.

"She looks like _you_ , actually, is more truthful," Emily said, shrugging again. "I've seen a few pictures of you when you were Faith's age. You look almost identical. It's crazy."

 _No it's not_ , Roxanne wanted to scream. _There must be a logical reason why we look the same, and you know why. You just don't want to say it. No one wants to say it. No one ever says it._

Instead, she nodded. "She's gonna be pretty though, no doubt about it. You'll want to keep her away from the boys when she gets older."

Emily's mouth tightened ever so slightly, but she was still smiling. "Yes. She wouldn't want to end up like her mum, now would she?"

Roxy didn't reply, only continued running her fingers through Faith's hair. She didn't really know _what_ to say in response to that. _Sorry? I understand what you mean?_

The clock chimed, eight, nine, ten times, and Emily looked up, expression startled like a frightened bowtruckle.

"Is it really already ten o'clock?" She looked down at her watch. "I ought to go. Faith shouldn't be out this late, she's so young—I shouldn't be out so late, either, really. Parties aren't really my thing…not anymore…" Emily trailed off.

"Yeah." Roxy did her best to avoid eye contact. "Well, bye then, I guess. Thanks for coming by and all. Mum appreciated it a lot."

"I'm sure she did." Emily seemed to want to say something more, but only smiled as she stood, scooping Faith up from the couch. "Well, maybe we could stop by later on. For—for your birthday, or something of that sort."

"Sure."

"Okay, great. Um, bye, Roxy. Tell your mum it was lovely seeing her again. And thank your grandmum for—for all the lovely food. She's a great cook." And with that, Emily and Faith were out the door, ignoring Louis' shouted good-bye as she walked to the edge of the grounds so that she could Apparate away from the Burrow.

Roxy sighed and stood up as well. She _really_ needed another Butterbeer after everything that had happened today. And after that, maybe she'd be able to sleep properly for the first time this week.


	4. The kids are (trying to be) alright

A few weeks after she had drunkenly Flooed home following her graduation party, Roxy woke up to find that she was not in her bed.

She sat up with a start, head spinning, looking around her to figure out where the hell she had ended up, rather than her bedroom in the flat above Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

There were Quidditch posters on the wall in front of her, Roxy saw when her eyes finally focused enough to make out details. Posters for Puddlemere United, but several years old. Retired players, outdated uniforms by a few years. James wasn't on any of them, either.

Oh. _Oh_. Roxy twisted behind her to look at the bed, where old magazines were spread across the sheets, clearly untouched in quite some time. She was in her brother's room, which felt more like a museum, untouched and unchanged since the day he had left.

She suspected that, if Roxy were to get up and inspect his dresser, she would find the same stack of letters between Freddie and Emily, bound together and collecting dust inside of the drawer that Freddie had shoved it inside five years ago. His favourite quill was probably still there as well—the one with his name in red and gold writing etched in.

Instead of confirming her suspicions, though, Roxy only stood up and walked out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

She didn't recall going into Freddie's room last night—in fact, Roxy was almost certain she remembered falling asleep on her own bed at almost two in the morning—but now was not the time to deal with her potential new sleep-walking problem.

Stopping into her room to grab new clothes for the day—there was no way she was going out in just her pyjamas, not ever since a picture of her had shown up in The Prophet a few years back wearing bunny slippers. Lily had thought it was hilarious, but Roxy just found it mortifying, being on display for the whole wizarding population of Britain in her nightclothes.

Roxy headed into the lavatory at the end of the hall, silently passing the bedroom that belonged to her mother, wondering if she ought to wake her mum up before she left. After all, it wouldn't be nice of her to let Mum wake up in a few hours with no clue where Roxy had run off to. Mum would panic and begin owling everyone she knew—and then Roxy would get caught. Bye-bye party-girl Roxy, hello full-time employee at the family shop.

I'll leave a note, she thought to herself. On the kitchen table, so she sees it when she goes to make breakfast. Or lunch.

Angelina Weasley was no longer the early riser she had once been; at almost fifty-one years old, and after twenty-four years of professional Quidditch playing, her mum complained of a permanent sore back. Instead of getting up to run five miles as she had done only five years ago, Mum would often sleep in until almost ten.

Not that Roxy thought that the fact that her mum had given up running perfectly coincided with everything that had happened was entirely a coincidence. But she wasn't going to say anything—if Mum wanted to admit that she was sleeping more as a coping method, then that was up to her. Roxy certainly wasn't going to push her into talking, not when she had spent the better part of the last five years refusing to talk to anyone about how she was doing.

She hopped into the shower, quickly scrubbing herself down and running shampoo through her hair. On a normal day, Roxy might have spent a little more time goofing off, singing to herself or something equally silly, but today she was in a rush. She had to get out before her mum woke up and tried to stop Roxy.

Her mum probably wouldn't be pleased that Roxy was going out—today of all days especially—but Roxy was eighteen, an adult in the eyes of the Ministry. Her mum could only really do so much to keep charge of her.

Roxy smiled into the mirror as she finished brushing her hair. She had on light make-up meant to accentuate her best feature, her brown-blue eyes—it was a good thing she had so many older female cousins to teach her about applying make-up—and, blowing the reflection inside her mirror a kiss, she left the lavatory.

Jo was probably already outside, waiting impatiently for Roxy to hurry up; that was what Jo was all about, impatience. She always wanted to get to the 'next big thing' as fast as she could, instead of stopping to enjoy and explore, like Roxy.

She scribbled a hasty note explaining that she was off with Jo for the day, sticking it onto the fridge with spellotape before hurrying downstairs, where the flat melded into the joke shop, which would be staying closed for the day.

(Uncle Ron's idea, out of respect for Mum. It was still strange to imagine Uncle Ron running the shop by himself, making executive decisions about what had once been Dad's store.)

When she hurried out of the darkened shop, it was to see Jo waiting impatiently for her, tapping one foot and looking down at her watch.

"Sorry. I woke up late," _and in the wrong room for some reason that I simply can't fathom_. Roxy gave Jo her best smile, and her friend only rolled her eyes, grabbing Roxy's hand. The two of them disappeared from the streets of Diagon Alley with a small pop just as—upstairs in her lonely room—Angelina Weasley woke up gasping.

When the world stopped spinning for Roxy, she looked up to see a familiar flat; they were in Stoke Newington, where Mia Itterman—an older girl who was about Victoire's age—lived with her younger brother, and where wild parties were held at least once a week for the enjoyment of anyone willing to attend, regardless of what house they belonged to while at Hogwarts.

"Party's already started," Roxy noted, hearing the dull thud of music coming from Mia's flat. "Think Kieran will be here?"

"Probably," Jo said, turning her head so that Roxy didn't notice Jo's eyes darken. "But I can tell you one person who's definitely already here." She nodded in the direction of a redheaded girl who was bouncing up and down, waving eagerly at them from the doorway of Mia's flat.

Roxy grinned up at her cousin, calling out, "Hey Lils," as she and Jo headed up the stairs. Though Lily was a whole two and a half years older—as well as nearly thirteen centimetres taller—than Roxy, she acted rather childlike, grinning madly at them and swinging back and forth against the railing as the younger girls reached the top of the staircase.

"Roxy baby," Lily said, giggling. She dropped a hand over Roxy's shoulder, pulling her inside and over to a group of chairs and couches, where a few familiar faces were gathered, including Lily's boyfriend, Tolkien Smith. "You'll never believe how happy I am to see you. Like, so happy, Roxy baby. So happy."

Lily already smelled of alcohol and her walk was unsteady as she stumbled to where Tolkien was sitting, nearly collapsing into his lap. Lily giggled again as someone handed Roxy a drink.

It was still rather strange to see Lily at these sorts of events—Lily had never been much of a party-girl until a few boyfriends ago, when she had somewhat reluctantly agreed to go to a rather wild New Year's party with Roxy and her then-boyfriend, Vikram Jhingade.

(Lily had always sworn she didn't really have a type, but there was certainly one thing her boyfriends always had in common—they were older than her, every time. So far, Tolkien, at eleven months older, was the youngest.)

But ever since she and Tolkien Smith had started going out, partying was all Lily wanted to do, apparently. She had invited Roxy to four different parties so far—this was the first invitation Roxy had accepted.

So strange, when just a year ago, their positions had been reversed and Lily refused every time Roxy brought it up. Lily didn't want to party, she said, didn't want to drink and get drunk with strangers, waking up who-knows-where the next morning.

"Besides," she had told Roxy more than once. "My dad would be so disappointed if word got out that—that Lily Potter was a party girl. And my mum would kill me. I'm their little girl, I'm supposed to be sweet and innocent. Not—not ending up on the front page of The Prophet for showing everyone my knickers or something."

Now, though, the prospect of being in a newspaper didn't seem to bother Roxy's cousin very much; Lily was one of the more prominent fixtures at Mia Itterman's ragers, and from what Jo had told Roxy, Lily was a bit of a wild girl, drinking heavily and making out with Tolkien until they were both gasping for air.

"Nice to see you again, Roxy Weasley," Tolkien said with his usual smirk. Roxy waved a hand at him, not really wanting to make conversation. She'd never much cared for Tolkien Smith, but she had nothing against him either, not personally at least.

"So I hear you've got something new for us today, Smith?" Jo asked with a raised eyebrow. Tolkien nodded, leaning over to grab something from his bag nearby. Roxy heard something rattle around as he poured the contents of a flask into a small plastic cup.

"Here," Tolkien said, handing a small cup to the boy next to him. Roxy leaned forward, curious; Tolkien always brought interesting things to their parties—they'd grown tired of Butterbeer almost immediately, and at this point, nearly everyone could handle Firewhiskey without any major problems.

"What's that then, Smith?" she asked as the cup was passed around, each person taking out a small round object in their hand. Roxy looked down at her palm, inspecting what she had been given.

"Yeah what've you got for us this time?" Mia Itterman took one with some hesitation crossing her features. Though she hosted these parties every time, Mia rarely actually took part in the festivities, usually leaving the heavy drinking and partying to her younger brother.

"Psychotropics o' a sort, I think. Pinched 'em off o' Matthias Fletcher—you know, that skeevy little bastard who's always selling knock-offs o' the Elder Wand or some shit near Knockturn? Anyway, he was trying to sell me what he swore on his life was a real unicorn horn—didn't look like it to me, though, and while he was distracted haggling prices over his fake shite, I—"

"Hey, no one wants the backstory on these things, Smith. We just wanna know what they're gonna do to us when we take 'em."

"Oh." Tolkien looked down at the circular white tablet in his own hand. "Well, I'm not actually sure. Like I said, I just pinched them off o' Fletcher, I don't actually know what they do-"

"Are you fucking trying to kill someone, Smith?" Mia demanded. "You brought shit over without even finding out what it does first? How fucking stupid are you?"

"Tolkie's not stupid," Lily said defensively, patting Tolkien's knee and shooting Mia a dirty look. "I think we should try them. Sort of like an experiment."

"An experiment that could potentially kill you," Mia grumbled.

Roxy followed the argument without bothering to contribute. If the others decided not to take the drugs, she wouldn't either; if they did take them, so would she. Roxy didn't particularly care how she got buzzed, just that she did and that it was a good time.

"Most experiments could potentially kill you, if you really think about it," Jo said in that morbid yet cheery way that only she could ever really pull off. "I agree with Lily, we should at least try once before making a decision to burn Smith at the stake. I know I'll certainly regret never giving it a spin if we don't. What about you, Mia?"

"Fine," Mia replied, though she didn't look entirely pleased.

Lily clapped her hands together, looking around excitedly. "Oh goody! I'll go first then, since it was my idea." She looked down at the tablet in her hand and swallowed. One by one, the others followed suit, until it was just Roxy and Mia left.

"Don't chicken out on us now, Rox," Jo said, laughing, her eyes already going wide as the drugs took effect. "C'mon, it'll be fun, don't be a coward."

"Okay," Roxy mumbled, lifting the tablet up to her mouth and swallowing. She had no clue, really, what to expect—only that if things went wrong, she was definitely going to kill Lily's boyfriend for fucking her up.

* * *

She is four-and-a-half, crying for Freddie to get back off the train and stay with her instead of leaving like everyone else.

She is six and Freddie is chasing her around Grandmum Weasley's Christmas tree, trying to stuff a Weasley jumper over her head.

She is eight and Freddie is tickling her as Mum brings out the cake, with the fourteen candles burning brightly on top.

She is almost ten, watching Lily and Hugo and Freddie wave good-bye from their train compartment as the train chugs out of the station.

She is nearly eleven (so close to eleven that it hurts) yelling that it isn't fair—it isn't fair it isn't fair it isn't fair you bastards—that she has to wait a whole year longer to go to Hogwarts.

She is thirteen, being hugged tightly by Dominique, who is crying so heavily that she leaves tear trains on Roxy's shirt and smears her make-up and doesn't seem very much like the Domi that Roxanne knows.

She is fourteen, and her grandmum is stroking Roxy's hair, saying how sorry she is, how unfair this has all been to Roxy and her parents.

She is fifteen, getting into fights with Matilda Longbottom and her cronies, who mock Roxy's hair and the fact that she isn't a real Weasley, like her brother.

She is eighteen, receiving her diploma, feeling those strange eyes watching her, making Roxy shudder and want to run.

She is eighteen and someone is in her dorm, someone is in her dorm.

She is eighteen and waking up in the wrong bed.

She is eighteen—she is eighteen—she is eighteen—she is…

* * *

"Roxy, are you okay? Hey, Rox, can you hear me? Rox? Rox? Seriously, this isn't fucking funny, are you okay? Rox? Hello?"

Roxanne tried sits up, groggy. Her head was spinning, her pulse was racing like she had just run from one end of Hogwarts to the other. And someone was yelling at her, shaking her, trying to get her attention. Roxy struggled to focus herself until the blurry mess of colours finally oriented itself into Jo and Mohammed Itterman, hovering over her with worried looks on their faces.

"You okay, Roxy?" Jo asked, placing a hand on Roxy's sweaty forehead. "Those drugs were wicked cool, weren't they? But they seriously fuck with your brain. I mean, I dunno what you saw, Rox, but if it was anything like what the rest of us saw—"

"What, memories of your childhood?" Roxy asked, pulling herself into a sitting position. The room had stopped spinning and she didn't feel like throwing up anymore.

Jo nodded excitedly. "You were the last one to come to. Tolkien—he says the after effects might last a little while longer, but whoa, wasn't that awesome? I mean, didn't it feel like just flash after flash? But it's already been almost two hours and—"

"What?" Roxy's eyes widen.

"Yeah, isn't that so wicked? Hey, I'm gonna go grab some food, 'kay? Mohammed can make sure you're fine while I'm gone, right Hammy?" Jo giggled before wandering off, her balance messed up as she nearly ran into a lamp.

Roxanne sat in silence for a few minutes, staring down at her hands. How had it been two hours already? She felt like she'd only gotten to the party—taken the pill from Tolkien—just a few minutes ago. But the memories—hallucinations or whatever—had been so vivid.

"You okay?" Mohammed asked her quietly, and she nodded, not wanting to concern him. After all, she'd been experimenting with drugs since the first party she'd attended at age fourteen. Though this new stuff of Tolkien's might've been a bit more than she was willing to handle, Roxy didn't want to look weak in front of everyone else.

"You know, Rox," Lily began rather suddenly from where she was sitting, tucked into Tolkien with a dazed look in her eyes. "I think he might be the one."

"Who? Tolkien?" Roxy couldn't keep herself from giggling, imagining Lily a few months or years down the road wearing a white dress, walking down the aisle to marry Tolkien Smith of all people. "What happened to a new boy every couple of months?"

"I…" Lily shrugged. "I think I'm in love with him, Roxy. I think he's the one, I really do. We love each other, you know."

"Have you ever told him that?"

"Well—no, but if you really love someone, do you have to tell them? I mean, has Kieran ever said he loves you?"

Roxy avoided making eye contact with the redhead, unwilling to admit that, though they had been dating since January, Kieran still had not said 'I love you' to her, though she had said it to him several times already.

"Exactly," Lily said smugly, attempting to cross her arms. She couldn't quite get one arm to fit under the other, though, and eventually gave up in favour of giggling again. "But I know I love him. We're destined to be together for—for forever. Like—like the stars themselves arranged that we would find each other and fall in love and…" She trailed off, a dreamy look on her face.

Roxy giggled again. "You sound like a particularly awful poem written by a lovesick teenage boy."

"Don't you believe in soulmates, Roxy?"

"Not hardly. I mean, wouldn't that mean that the universe has to—to take time out to pair up everyone who's ever lived or will live? I just…I don't think the universe cares enough about us to bother with soulmates. Hell, I don't have enough time to bother with finding a regular mate."

"So you don't think you and Kieran are destined to be?"

Roxy shrugged, again avoiding eye contact. "Nah. I mean, if he asks me to marry him—maybe in a few years, maybe I'll say yes. But I don't think any stars were 'aligned' or 'arranged' for us. We're just—we're just people, you know? Normal people."

"I agree," Mohammed said from where he was sitting, his deep voice cutting through the air as he looked over at Roxy. "Soulmates are totally overrated. However, Firewhiskey is not." He grinned, pushing himself up off the ground. "I'll be back, yeah?"

"Hey, where's Maccabee?" Tolkien called out as Mohammed stood up, and Roxy almost jumped in her seat. She turned to look at Tolkien, squished in a chair with his arm around Lily, who was grinning lazily. "Doesn't Maccabee normally come to these kinds o' things? Where the fuck is she?"

"Em's busy," said Charlie Stebbins from where she was on the floor; she had been sitting in a chair at one point, Roxy vaguely remembered, but had begun to giggle hysterically until she fell out and hadn't bothered to get up since then. "She says she's busy, at least, but really it's just that Cornfoot doesn't like her hanging out with druggies and drunks. Says it's bad for the—the—the whas's it called, that kid of hers."

Roxy wasn't feeling so giddy anymore as she sat up.

"What?" Tolkien demanded, scowling. "She's ditching us because of that shitty little snot-nose o' hers? Goddamn. Remind me never to have kids if that's what it does to you."

"Tolkie," Lily crooned into his ear. "Tolkie, forget about Maccabee, she's not important, not when I'm right here. C'mon, kiss me and forget all about that dumb girl. She's not important, she's just a grump and not even half as pretty as me, right?"

They were making out again, and Roxy averted her eyes, wishing Jo would come back soon. She hadn't wanted to be reminded of Emily Maccabee, not today, and now, with the old memories of her brother suddenly dredged up and swimming in the front of her mind from Tolkien's weird drugs, Roxy was no longer in a very party-girl mood.

She stood up, grabbing her discarded coat off of the chair—when had she taken her coat off?—stumbling forward in search of the door. Jo would understand if Roxy ditched early, wouldn't she? Besides, with Lily and Tolkien making out—she looked over to see they were now creeping towards the bedroom—no one else would really care or even notice if she left.

Roxy was right—no one said a word when she stepped out of the flat and Apparated away. No one even knew she had left until several hours later, when the party was winding down.


	5. Suffering from parental expectations

"Why did your parents name you Tolkien?" Roxy asked the next time they all gathered together. Tolkien had once again brought his strange new drugs—which he unimaginatively referred to as __time trippers__ —but Roxy opted out of "tripping time" with all of the others.

She had no desire to see memories of her brother, not in her dreams, not while high. She stuck to Firewhiskey, instead. Much safer. At least Firewhiskey didn't make you remember weird shit from a dozen years ago that were better off staying forgotten. Firewhiskey hurt like a bitch going down and would hurt twice as much tomorrow morning—but that was infinitely better than being forced to recall memories she had shoved to the back of her mind.

"Eh?" Tolkien muttered, looking up from the daze he was stuck in. "Me? Dunno, really. My mum…she was—she __is__ a half-blood, you know, even if she pretends not to be. Granddad is a muggle, and he's always been a bit o' a bookworm, and when Mum found out I was gonna be __another__ boy he begged Mum and Dad to let him name me. I guess Tolkien was some big muggle novelist or something, back when Granddad was a kid."

"Hm." She'd never heard of a Tolkien before. Perhaps Molly—who read muggle novels quite avidly—would know who he was.

"Why'd they name you Roxanne?"

Roxy shrugged. She had never been particular to asking why, of all names, her parents had stuck her with the name __Roxanne__. "I know it means dawn or bright—something along those lines, but I wasn't, like, _named_ after anybody in particular."

"Like your brother was?" Tolkien raised an eyebrow at her as Roxy froze, her drink nearly slipping to the floor. She caught it just in time to keep it from smashing. "He was, wasn't he? That's what I heard, that he was named after an uncle or something."

"Uncle Fred," Roxy whispered almost to herself. She could still remember Dad telling the story of what had happened to his brother—Roxy had been twelve, and Freddie nearly eighteen. It had been the first time Dad had ever told them __anything__ about his brother, outside of what most people could have found from a history book.

"Oh yeah. Didn't he die in the war?"

"Yeah…he was my dad's twin brother. They—they were only twenty at the time. They ran Weasley's Wizard Wheezes together, and they were members of Dumbledore's Army while at school. Dad…" she took a deep breath, calming her nerves. "Dad said some Death Eater blew up a wall near where Uncle Percy was and Uncle Fred pushed him out of the way. Said—said Uncle Fred died laughing. He was always laughing…"

Tolkien gave her a sympathetic look. "Damn, that's harsh. I don't think we lost anyone in my family during the war, but I know it seriously messed with my mum's head. She used to have these, like, nightmares all the time, you know? O' people dying and deep shit like that? Friends o' hers, I guess. I dunno, she never talked about it with us. Said she didn't want us to be scarred like she was, not if she could prevent it."

"That sounds reasonable," Roxy muttered, remembering years ago—as a little girl not even old enough for Hogwarts—waking up to the sounds of someone crying in the other room. She had not initially realised it was her __parents__ crying; after all, to a six or seven year old, parents are invincible superheroes who have no reason to cry about __anything__ _._

"Suppose so. But Mum was always kind o' distant when I was growing up. I used to think it was 'cause I wasn't a twin—I've got __two__ sets of older twin brothers, you know, and a fifth brother with no twin at all, single just like I am? After a while, though, I realised she just wasn't very emotionally attached to any of us. I think—I __think__ it was the war, honestly, that made her that way."

"Do you blame her?" Roxy took another sip of Firewhiskey, feeling the burn course through her body as if fireworks had been set off inside of her. "Sometimes I blame my mum when she acts weird about stuff, when she detaches from everything, especially me."

Tolkien looked away, rubbing at his chin. "Dunno, really. Not sure I ever cared enough to bother blaming her. I mean, I was messed up myself enough as it was. Youngest o' five boys? With a nutter for a mum and a da that was only barely doing what he could? Nah, I couldn't blame her for not caring 'nough for me. Least my parents tried to show they loved me when they were able to."

Roxy looked down at her drink thoughtfully. She wasn't sure if the same could be said for herself—was she bitter? Did she blame her parents for what the war had done to them? __Perhaps__ _…just a little_ , she admitted to herself. Roxy had never considered that before, being angry at them for how she had grown up.

"You okay Weasley?" Tolkien asked, leaning over to poke Roxy in the shoulder. "I swear, your whole family is just, like, __spacey__. Lils too—she's always getting distracted and lost in thought. Is that just a Weasley thing or what?"

"I suppose so." Roxy stood up with a sigh. "I think I'm going to get another drink. All of this—this __insightful consideration__ or whatever is a bit too much for me. I'm definitely not smashed enough to—to consider whether or not I hate my own mum for—for something out of her control."

Tolkien nodded absently. "Hey Weasley, it's okay to hate your mum, nobody'll blame you. I think everybody does at some point or 'nother in their life. It's just a matter of separating the wrong from the right, yeah? Figuring out what they __could__ control and what they __couldn't__."

"Yeah. Thanks for the advice Tolkien."

"Mhmm. That's what I'm here for Weasley. Mr Drugs and Advice Guy." He chuckled as Roxy walked off into the kitchen. "Oh, hey Weasley?" She turned to see Tolkien looking up at her. "You know Maccabee?"

"Yes." Her voice was terse though Tolkien didn't seem to notice.

"If you see her around—like, if you can get a hold o' her?" He paused, looking awkwardly down at the sleeping Lily pooled at his feet.

"What?"

"Oh, it's nothing I guess. Just tell her I said 'hello' or something like that. Tell her nobody blames her for not wantin' to come anymore. Tell her—tell her…tell her I understand, will you Weasley? Tell her I understand why." His forehead was sweaty and his cheeks flushed.

"You okay Tolkien?" Roxy peered at him curiously. She had never seen him so worked up about anything before. She hadn't even really thought Emily and Tolkien were very friendly; Roxy had certainly never heard anything about the two of them.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine Weasley, don't worry about me. Just—just tell her that the next time you see her, okay? And, uh, go enjoy yourself."

"Um…" He shrugged at her to signify that the conversation—as strange and vague as it was—had ended. "Alright, Tolkien. See you later then, I guess."

"See you, Weasley."

* * *

"You've got a letter," her mum said when Roxy stumbled into the kitchen the next morning for breakfast, still slightly hungover. "It's from the __Ministry__."

"What?" Roxanne paused, startled by the enthusiasm in her mum's voice. "Why's the Ministry writing to __me__? I haven't broken any laws yet."

"Perhaps they want to hire you," her mum replied, intentionally ignoring Roxy's last statement. "You know, I always said your brother's talents ought to be put to good use, not just Quidditch."

"Mum," Roxy protested, brow furrowing as she picked the letter up from the table, turning it over in her hands. " _You_ _played_ Quidditch, remember? For twenty-four bloody years."

"Yes, I remember—which is __exactly__ why I didn't want Freddie getting so involve. I mean, the professional level is just so difficult, even if you're extremely talented—and just _l_ _ _ook__ at what happened to him—"

"Okay Mum. I understand, you don't want me to waste my time playing Quidditch. But I never _i_ _ _ntended__ to apply to a professional Quidditch team, remember? However, I also didn't ever plan on getting a job at the Ministry."

"Well what __did__ you intend on doing, young lay? You can't loaf around all day for the rest of your life, you know. I won't allow it. No daughter of mine is going to sit at home and do nothing with herself, that's for sure."

"I was thinking of taking over the store, actually," Roxy admitted quietly. Her mum froze in her seat, half of a piece of toast still dangling from her fingers as she gaped at Roxy. "I always had fun working for the shop over the summer, and I was really good at it. Don't you think that'd be a good fit for me? It's certainly a lot more interesting that a boring office job."

"You? Run the shop?" Her mum's voice was empty of emotion. "We were going to give the shop to your brother. That's what we decided—Freddie would run the shop. Everything was supposed to be lined up by the time your father finally retired, so it would be easy for him to step down and let Freddie take his place."

Roxy sighed. "That's not an option anymore, Mum."

"Yes, I know," her mum said vacantly, drumming her fingers on the table. "But there were never any plans for __you__ to run Weasley's Wizard Wheezes."

Roxy was annoyed; she hated the way her mum, with just a few words, managed to completely shut down everything Roxy was saying? Was Mum even listening to a thing that Roxy was saying—or was she too caught up in what was __supposed__ to have happened? "Then what __did__ you expect me to do? If not manage the shop, what __was__ the plan for me, Mum?"

"I don't know," the older woman admitted, avoiding her daughter's gaze. "We never really thought about it. You were just so much younger, we were focused on getting Freddie's life together, you know? I suppose your father and I would have sat down with you eventually and figured something out, but at the time—"

"You were only interested in Freddie." Roxy's voice was cold as she stood up, letter still in hand. "Just like always. Just like __now__. You don't think about me, you don't consider me. Everything I've ever done—it's always compared to __him__! Always second best—to __him__! But guess what, Mum? I can't be the least favourite child anymore!"

"That isn't __true__ , Roxanne!" her mother protested, standing up as well, the kitchen chair scraping noisily across the tile. "I loved you and your brother __equally__. I always have. It may have seemed like we paid him a little more attention, but that was only because he was older than you and we had to get things decided for him—"

"I really don't care Mum, I really don't." Roxy could feel her blood pumping in her head as she avoiding her mum's gaze. Even while screaming at her, Roxy couldn't help but feel guilty for lashing out. She didn't mean to be rude, it was just— _it was just that she wanted her mum to hurt more than Roxy was hurting at that moment._

"Where are you going Roxanne?" her mother demanded.

"I'm taking a _nap_. Arguing with you about how I'm going to run __my__ life is absolutely exhausting and I don't want to do it anymore."

She stomped off, stuffing the letter into the bin on her way out. Roxy could hear her mum still protesting from the kitchen, but only rolled her eyes and kept going down the hallway. Her mum could argue all she like that she had no favourites, but that didn't mean it was true. Roxy had always seen the way her parents treated her differently from Freddie—giving him more freedom, more choice to do what he wanted.

Her mum could say she didn't love Freddie more than Roxy, but her mum could also lie fairly well when she needed to.

* * *

Roxy woke from her nap to find herself on the floor. She groaned, sitting up, and then groaned again. She was in Freddie's room—an occurrence that was becoming obnoxiously regular. She knew she was falling asleep in her own room—she knew she was!—yet she kept waking up on the floor of Freddie's bedroom.

This was the fifth time in two weeks that Roxy opened her eyes to find herself in her older brother's room with no explanation. She couldn't understand why that was; Roxy had never been the sort to sleep walk before now, and she couldn't understand her apparent fixation with Freddie's room either.

 _He's been gone for five years now. Get over it._

"Roxanne? What're you doing in here?" Roxy glanced up to see her mum in the doorway, holding a basket of laundry twice her width. She could see the exhaustion in her mum's eyes, the strain that holding the basket seemed to be.

 _When had my mother gotten old? When had she begun to grow weak?_ Roxy was startled by the obvious signs of aging in her mother, a woman whom Roxy had always seen as being almost eternally youthful.

"Oh, sorry Mum," Roxy mumbled, getting to her feet, the Puddlemere blanket sliding off of her shoulders. "I guess I just, uh…wrong room, I guess." She laughed nervously, moving to push past her mother, who continued to block the doorway. "Just wasn't thinking, you know me."

"It's not changed at all, has it? Five years and it hasn't changed at all." Mum looked around the room wistfully. "All of his old posters, his books from Hogwarts." She stepped into the room with a longing look in her eyes, as though seeing the boy who had once lived in this room.

"Yeah, Mum, that's sort of what happens when nobody comes in here for five years, not even to clean or anything. Nothing changes about it. I mean, if __I__ were gone—"

"Don't say that." Her mum's eyes flashed darkly. "Don't you ever say that again Roxanne. If you—if _you_ left me as well, after everything that's happened…"

"Sorry Mum. I was only just saying, you know? I mean, you've not come in here for five years either, so I'm not really sure what else you were expecting. The only thing that's changed is that there's more dust than there used to be. What were you expecting to see?"

"I dunno." Mum looked down at the laundry. "I just…every time I walk by, I almost expect him to come out of there and smile at me, like he's just been fiddling around at something for a few hours. Like he'll ask me when dinner is and everything will be back to normal and you're father was still—" Her face froze.

"I'm sorry Mum," Roxanne said hurriedly, as the basket crashed to the floor, recently dried garments spilling across the carpet. "Mum I didn't mean to upset you, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to make you think about that stuff."

Her mum began crying silently, tears rolling down her dark cheeks and Roxy hugged her mother tightly, still apologising. She hadn't expected her mum to have such a poor reaction—it had been years, and her mum had never been much of a crier, but…seeing the tears that stained her mother's face, Roxy's stomach churned.

"I didn't mean to upset you Mum, really I didn't."

"It's okay Roxanne," Mum replied, sniffling slightly. She pushed Roxy away gently, looking down at her daughter with a watery smile. "I guess it _is_ a little silly of me to be crying now. It…it __has__ been four years now, hasn't it? I suppose I was just still a bit upset from our argument this morning, and then seeing his room for the first time since—"

"Yeah." Roxy breathed in deeply. "Look, I'm sorry for yelling at you this morning Mum, I really am. I shouldn't have yelled at you or—or gotten mad, it was just that…well, I'm not really the Ministry type, now am I?"

Her mum laughed, shaking her head. "I don't know _what_ I was thinking. You in the Ministry? Kingsley would go into apoplectics having to deal with you every day. You'd always be asking questions, getting into things, making messes. The Ministry would go haywire."

Roxy smiled back at her mother, but the only thing she really wanted to do was grab another Firewhiskey and owl Jo to see if she wanted to hang out _anywhere_ but here. "Coping mechanisms" the Healers had called it when Roxy's mum had taken her in to talk about everything that had happened. Roxy "avoided issues", she "shut down" whenever one of them wanted to ask her things. They said she was too upset to deal with the grief at that moment—that she'd open up eventually and tell everyone all of her problems, but that was yet to happen.

She just wasn't a very open person; Roxy didn't see the point in crying about everything, in breaking down and blubbering like a baby just because…

And her mum usually wasn't any different. That was probably where Roxy had gotten her "coping mechanism" from, her mum. She could easily recall the awkward summer after her father's funeral, when it had just been the two of them in the flat.

Anne had been the one to take over the shop—she had, after all, worked at the Diagon Alley location even before Roxy was born. Mum hadn't even bothered to negotiate or look for anyone else, perhaps in the family. She had just signed the necessary paperwork to promote Anne to practically _in charge_ , like she could so easily replace Dad.

Roxy had avoided going into the shop all summer, instead choosing to take the front door, which lead directly into the street. She had only been fourteen—nearly fifteen—but Mum had been too distracted to really notice when Roxy left in the early morning and came home long after what should have been dinner time.

But it __hadn't__ been dinner time, because __Dad__ was the one who cooked everything and people had long ago stopped bothering to bring by meals with a side of condolences. She got most of her food from the Leaky Cauldron, because Mrs Longbottom pitied Roxy.

Once, before her father had died and her mum had shut down, Roxy might have resented Mrs Longbottom for the obvious pity, the I'm-so-sorry in her voice every time she came over with a shepherd's pie or a casserole. But Roxy had grown too hungry to bother getting angry.

Later, by late July, she had received an invitation from an older student to one of Mia Itterman's regular get-togethers. It wasn't the first time she'd ever had Butterbeer, but those parties were her first taste of Firewhiskey, her first time experimenting with the weird things that the older party-goers brought in for everyone to try.

It was the first time since April that she had found someone who didn't look at her as Freddie Weasley's little sister, or George and Angelina Weasley's daughter. She was just Roxanne before— but now she was _Roxy_ , the wild party-girl who drank too much and danced too wildly.

The parties were where she found her first boyfriend—and later on, where she had caught him making out with another girl. They were where she finally decided to stop feeling ashamed about being a Slytherin, because she was _surrounded_ by Slytherins, or at least people who couldn't care less what house she was in because they were all too busy having a good time.

"What are you thinking about Roxanne?" her mum asked, pulling Roxy back to the present, where she was eighteen and staring into her mother's teary eyes. "You had that far-away look again, like you get whenever you're thinking particularly hard."

"Mm." Roxy couldn't admit to her mother the truth. Though Mum knew that Roxy was sometimes more wild that she wanted, Roxy had never told her mother about the endless parties, the experimenting, the wild behaviour with boys ten years older than her. "I was just…thinking about Dad, I guess. About what he'd think about us having a good cry in Freddie's bed with an overturned basket of clothes at our feet."

"He'd probably laugh at me," Mum said with a chuckle. "Start making jokes about everything. That's what he—what he used to do. Everything was funny to him. That's why he was so good in the shop, because as far as he was concerned, _anything_ could be turned into a joke."

"Yeah." Roxy pulled herself away, leaning over to grab some trousers off the floor. "Here, let me help you."

"Thanks." Her mum also began picking up clothes, tossing them into the basket. "He would have been proud of you, Roxanne, you know that, right?"

Roxy started, avoiding her mother's gaze. "What do you mean? Proud of what?"

"How mature you've gotten. How smart and beautiful you are. He was so excited when you were born. We—we hadn't found out the gender beforehand, not with either one of you, because we wanted it to be a surprise. When they told him you were a girl…"

"Mum?" Something bad, something she should never ask came to mind just then; she knew she oughtn't say anything, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut. She'd never really known how to keep her questions to herself.

"Yes Roxanne?"

"If Dad loved me so much, why did he kill himself?"


	6. If this is what adulthood is

Roxy stared across the table at Jo in shock as the other girl finished wringing water from her hair. "I'm sorry, would you mind repeating that last bit?"

"I got a job," Jo repeated with a grin. "At the _Ministry of Magic_ in the Department of Magical Transportation. I'm working in the Apparition testing centre, and they said if I stay around for at least five years, I'll be able to do actual _testing_."

"Right." Roxy nodded weakly, taking a sip of her drink. They were sitting in The Spellman's Pub, rather close to one of the large windows that allowed a good view of the pavement. Roxy watched as witches and wizards bustled by outside. "Right. You got a job at the Ministry. The one place we said we'd _never_ gets jobs at."

"Oh don't be silly Rox," Jo said, laughing. "There were plenty of places we said we'd never work at. But Mum's been threatening to kick me out if I don't find some way of making money and, well, I _was_ always really interested in Apparition, so I figured why not? It's a lot more interesting than, say, studying the thickness of cauldron bottoms."

She shed her wet robes, setting them down on the floor near the fireplace, which crackled merrily despite it being nearly twenty-seven degrees outside. It had been raining all morning, part of the reason why Roxy had owled Jo and invited her out to lunch. Mum was being absolutely irritating, bothering Roxy about going out and getting a job.

"You seem shocked Rox. How long did you think we'd make it if we never bothered getting jobs? Even a couple of wild, rebellious party-girls like ourselves need an income, you know. Besides, isn't Kieran trying to be an Auror? That's _totally_ conformist Ministry lackey of him wouldn't you say? Yet I don't hear you complaining."

"Well—that's—it's just—it's _different_!" Roxy spluttered, making Jo laugh even harder. Roxy felt her ears burn and swept her hair forward, hoping it would hide the flush of pink across her cheeks.

"Mum's been an absolute loon, though. Ever since I graduated, every bloody day, pestering me to get out of the house, to go look for a job. She says I'm, well, a _loafer_ and she's had enough of that sort of behaviour from my older siblings." Jo smirked and rolled her eyes. "I guess she thinks I'm going to be like Micky, still living at home even though he's thirty."

Jo had two older brothers and a sister, all of whom had gone to Beauxbatons, like their mother; Jo was the youngest, as well as the first to attend Hogwarts after getting into an argument with her mum about going to a _proper_ British school, like a _proper_ British girl.

Her oldest brother, Michael, was lazy, regularly sleeping until the late afternoon and then frequenting pubs, wizard and muggle alike, until he got kicked out for harassing the staff. He seemed to have no intention of _ever_ getting a job, instead choosing to live off what his parents gave him; Jo thought his behaviour was at least admirable.

"I dunno what _my_ mum thinks," Roxy said, as a waitress stopped by to take their orders. "I mean, she has prodded me a bit about going to look for employment, but I think she's fine with me staying at home for now. At least I'm not like my cousin Domi."

"Isn't that the one who ran off?"

"Yeah. And no one really knows why or where she went, but they found her in the Thames a few years back—or, someone who _looks_ like her. Uncle Bill's still not sure it's really her. I dunno, personally. If she drowned, or if she moved out of the country, you know, it's all sort of the same in the end. She's not _here_ anymore."

"So you weren't particularly close, then?" Jo tilted her head thoughtfully.

"Not really. I mean, she was nearly seven years older than me—the perfect student type, a Ravenclaw. She was really shocked, actually, when she heard where I got sorted, even more than most of my family, because she didn't think I was 'the evil sort'." Roxy shrugged at Jo's scoff. "We didn't talk much after that, and then she disappeared a few months later."

"Mm." Jo glanced out the window, where the rain had picked up, pelting against the roof and making those who had previously been milling about outside take cover wherever they could find it. "Well, you know my mum didn't really know what Slytherin meant, and my dad's a muggle, so I guess there was never really an issue for me about that."

Outside, two young kids—not even Hogwarts age yet—danced around, splashing in puddles and getting thoroughly soaked; Roxy giggled until a scowling woman stepped out from one of the shops to yell at the two, grabbing them both by the collars and dragging them inside.

"You've definitely got the easier home life," Roxy agreed with a sigh. "People have been asking me for years for discounts at the shop—or what it likes to be the daughter of _Angelina Weasley_ , or the nephew of the great Harry Potter. I get recognised on the street sometimes—recognised! I've caught at least a few numbskull reporters even trying to sneak a picture of me. It's ridiculous; there is _no_ privacy at all."

"Hey, it can't be _all_ bad, right? I mean, you knew about all that modern history stuff years before the rest of us, and—"

"I wish. My parents refused to tell me anything. Dad always said I was too young to know—and then, after, Mum just didn't want to talk about it. And my older cousins weren't too keen about saying much either."

Jo gave Roxy a shocked look. "I would've thought at least Lily?" Roxy shook her head. "Wow. And here I thought she loved you. But doesn't your family, like, get free seats at Quidditch matches all the time? Plus, you live, like, _right over_ the coolest shop ever. I bet you get free merchandise—I bet you get to see stuff that the public doesn't for months!"

"I guess." Roxy sighed again. "But still, I'd like to be able to hang out in public without people coming up to talk to me because they saw me in _The Prophet_ a few weeks ago, or because they knew someone in my family and wanted to say—"

"Hey, aren't you Roxanne Weasley?" the waitress interrupted as she brought over their meals; Roxy groaned, head dropping to the table and Jo laughed.

* * *

After their meal—which, luckily, contained no more curious strangers interested in her personal life—Roxy and Jo decided to head back to the shop to see if their help was needed; it was July, after all, and one of the part-timers, Eddie, had quit a few days ago. Anne was probably drowning in customers while she struggled to find someone to take his place.

"Hey Rox," her cousin said, grinning at the two girls as they entered the shop. "And, um, Bartley, right?"

"Yep." Jo rolled her eyes at James' charming smile; she had never been particularly impressed by him at school, and seemed even less wooed by the fact that he was currently dating an old classmate of her sister's; sources said she was a boyfriend-stealing _bitch_. "Joanna Bartley."

"What're you doing here James?" Roxy asked, jumping in before James and Jo started bickering. "We haven't seen you around the shop in—uh, in a while. Were you starting to miss Anne?" Roxy smirked at the look of distaste on James' face. "Or did Puddlemere finally come to their senses and fire you, so now you need a job and you knew we'd be the only ones to hire the likes of you?"

"Thanks for the boost of confidence Rox," James replied. "But no, I was actually hoping to find Lily here. She was buzzing around my flat a few days ago and now some of my stuff's missing."

"You think Lily—your own sister—burgled you?" Jo raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you Potters supposed to be, like, extremely rich? If she needed something, she could just go buy it, right? And besides, what would you have that she could possibly want?"

"Er, well," James rubbed the back of his head nervously. "They weren't exactly _my_ things, per se. the things that've gone missing belong to Camille. Jewellery and the like. And I _don't_ think Lils took them—but Camille's having an absolute fit right now, accusing pretty much everyone who's stopped by in the past week of taking them."

"Lovely girl you've gotten yourself Potter," Jo muttered. "I can see why boys like her so much, what with her _winning personality_ and all."

"Camille's nice enough once you've gotten to know her. She can be, er, very charming when she wants to be. And besides that, she's got—"

"Tits."

"Oi!" Roxy said loudly, laughing nervously. "Come on now, let's focus on James' issue and not his girlfriend." She turned to James, hoping he'd drop the subject and stop glaring down at Jo. "Why would Lily have any reason to take Camille's jewellery? I thought she wasn't very big on fancy stuff like that—Lils has always struck me as more of a jeans and tees sort of girl. She wouldn't have any real incentive to take anything."

"Right," James replied heavily, running his hands through his hair. "But Camille thinks that Lily's taking her stuff and, uh, selling it off for her, er, drug problem?" James wrinkled his nose, clearly in disbelief that his baby sister would ever have _anything_ to do with drugs. Jo smirked. "She's under the impression that Lily and that boy of hers'—Smith—are burgling everything away bit by bit to afford all the drugs and drink that he's so notorious for abusing."

 _Shit_ , Roxy thought to herself. Was it possible that Lily and Tolkien _were_ pinching stuff from James' girlfriend? She had noticed that the two of them seemed to be paying a lot more frequently for the endless parade of drinks that were needed to support their parties. That money had to come from _somewhere_ —and it couldn't have been from the Potter vault, because then Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny would have found out and blown up over the whole thing.

"There's no way," she said out loud. "That's not like Lily. She's not—she's not into drugs. And, uh, Tolkien's been getting clean, I think I heard recently. Y'know, being with Lily and all has probably helped him see how much better it is to be sober, so…"

Jo was struggling to keep it together, her mouth twitching so much that she had to cover it with her sleeve to keep James from noticing.

"Mm." James looked around the shop, taking in all the customers milling about, and sighed quietly. "I suppose you're right. Lily's always been a good girl. Much more well behaved than Al or I have _ever_ been. She might have a, ah, _questionable_ choice in boyfriends, but she's a good kid. I'll make Camille see sense. Thanks Rox."

"Any time James," Roxy replied, waving as James wandered out of the shop. She looked over at Jo, who began laughing hysterically as the bell chimed, the door clicking shut behind Roxy's cousin. "Oh stuff it Jo. It's not _that_ funny."

"' _Lily's always been a good girl,_ '" Jo said in imitation of James, laughing so hard that she was nearly crying. "'And _Tolkien's been getting clean!'_ Merlin, Rox, you're _hysterical_. The day Tolkien Smith goes clean is the day I'll be elected for Minister of Magic." She continued to laugh wildly, wiggling her eyebrows at Roxy.

Finally, Roxy couldn't keep it together any longer either, and she laughed as well, pressing her hands into her eyes at the thought of what her uncle and aunt would think if they ever found out the truth about their precious little girl.

When they had finally calmed, Roxy looked over at Jo, a thought occurring to her suddenly. "Jo?" she asked hesitantly, not quite certain she wanted to hear an honest answer. "If you're going to start working now—like, _really_ working, I mean—does that mean you'll stop coming to the parties with me? Because Kieran dropped them as soon as we graduated, and I'll be all alone if you leave me as well."

Jo frowned. "I—I dunno, really. I mean, I hadn't really considered how much _time_ I'll have to put in—it's a lot of filing and checking identities and writing up reports, at least in the beginning, and I'll probably be expected to do quite a bit, since I'll be the 'new girl'…" Jo shrugged. "Maybe this is a sign Rox. Maybe we _should_ stop going to those dumb parties. I mean, the only ones really left are people still in Hogwarts who want to seem cool, or—or low-lives like Tolkien Smith. If we ever want to be successful, well, it'll be smart of us to stop while we're ahead, you know?"

It was not what Roxy had wanted to hear.

"Hey Roxanne!" she heard someone call from across the store, and turned to see Anne waving at her from the register. "Roxanne! Roxanne, come here for a minute, will you?"

"C'mon Jo, we might as well see what she wants," Roxy muttered, frowning. Hearing that she was being dumped in the same category as try-hard students and has-been young adults was bad enough—now Anne had to bother her as well?

They wandered over to where Anne was bustling about the front desk, serving one customer after another, all with a serious smile on her face. Roxy didn't think Anne _could_ crack a real smile, or even a joke. It was amazing that she had chosen—of all places—a joke shop to work at, but even Roxy couldn't deny that Anne was at least bloody brilliant at running the store.

"Yeah Anne?"

"Oh thank goodness! We are _absolutely_ swamped here. Would you mind asking your mum to come down here to help me run through inventory? I'd go up there myself, but she doesn't seem to like me very much—I'm not sure _why_ , I didn't think I'd ever done much to insult her." Anne frowned, looking thoughtful before continuing. "Also Jacob says he might be gone by August—something about possibly getting signed on at his father's place—and we _still_ haven't replaced Eddie, so I'm really going to need her to work through some resumes with me so we can find someone good enough to replace them. And I was thinking that maybe we ought to move Katie to strictly the ground floor, she keeps setting off the Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder upstairs—"

"Anne?" Roxy interrupted, making Anne furrow her brow. "You want me to get my _mum_ to come down _here_? Into the _shop_? The shop that she hasn't stepped foot into since my father's funeral?"

"Oh. Hm. Yes, you're right, I hadn't considered that." Anne sighed, like Angelina Weasley's decision to avoid the shop for the past four years was little more than a hindrance. "Well, I suppose I could always go up to the flat and talk to her then. If you wouldn't mind being a middleman of sorts for me? Arranging a time with her? That'd be great."

With that, Anne turned back to her work without even waiting for a response from Roxy, who only rolled her eyes. That was how Anne had always been—she talked and talked until she was done and then she left, expecting everyone else to fulfil her desires no matter what.

"Sure Anne, that'd be _no_ problem at all," Roxy muttered sarcastically while Jo giggled quietly. Roxy respected Anne, or at least she tried to, but the older woman drove Roxy absolutely mad with her absurd tendencies sometimes.

They wandered away from the front of the shop once again after Jo complained that she was feeling a bit claustrophobic with all the kids running around. Unfortunately, there was nowhere that was very quiet, and with the rain still coming down heavily outside, their only real option left was to head upstairs to where Roxy and her mum lived.

"Haven't been here in a while," Jo said with forced casualty. Mum did not entirely approve of Jo, with her tattoo and piercings; while Mum had never expressly said Jo was not welcome, she had always made the flat feel awkward if Jo ever came over. The last time had been for only a few hours in their fourth year.

"Well, she's not home right now, so I think we're fine."

"Does your mum know?" Jo asked as they climbed up the stairs, the curtain that separated shop from home swinging shut behind them. "About the _letter_?"

"No." Roxy didn't look at Jo as she unlocked the door, ushering her friend inside. "And I don't think I'm going to tell her any time soon. She was already so eager about me getting into an internship at the Ministry when we got _that_ letter. Mum's better off not hearing about this one either."

The _letter_ was an invitation from Henrik's Potions, a _highly_ prestigious potions company that supplied St Mungo's with most of their various potions and creams, as well as having a near-monopoly on the creation of Veritaserum for the Auror department. To even be considered by them was honour enough.

And it wasn't like Roxy wasn't interested in possibly interning there—she had spoken to several high-up officials who were employed there, as well as her cousin Rose, who had worked for Henrik's for nearly three years now—but she just didn't feel right.

 _Sure_ , she had ranked first in Potions every single year at Hogwarts; _sure_ , she had tutored other students who were struggling with Potions class. But that didn't necessarily mean she'd be any good in a professional environment. With her wild hair, bright and out-there clothes, and heavy scowl, Roxy wasn't exactly the usual sort that Henrik's tended to employee.

Rose was more of Henrik's type—Head Girl, a prefect for two years, second in her class only behind Kinsley Cornfoot, Rose was one of those _perfect_ girls that mums loved to brag about. Not to mention that Rose was so _professional_ and adult-like. At twenty-two, she was already married to her long-time girlfriend and was looking to adopt soon. In short, Rose was very nearly everything that Roxy could never be.

So, no, Roxy _hadn't_ mentioned the letter to her mum; she was too afraid her mum would try to push Roxy into trying to get a job there, and then they would realise that she wasn't any good—or at least not good enough for _them_ —and she would be kicked out. And her mum would be so disappointed, as she always was whenever a letter had been sent home because Roxy had gotten another detention for talking back or fighting.

"You'll want to tell her eventually though, won't you Rox? I mean, if _I_ practically had a job just lined up for me, I'd jump at the chance to accept it," Jo said, throwing herself across the couch, grinning lazily up at Roxy.

The smaller girl only shrugged. She was confident—mostly—but the idea of going out to get a job, a _real_ job, was simply just too 'adult' for Roxy. "I suppose. But I don't have a job 'lined up for me'. It's just an internship for a year—and they could kick me out of the program at any moment, if they wanted to. It barely pays anything. And besides—"

"Oh stuff it," Jo said, chuckling. "Just write 'em back, say you're interested, and try it out. If you don't like it, then flip the bloody old codgers off and leave. But if you _do_ like it, and I seriously suspect you will, then you'll find yourself with an awesome job with a fancy title and a tidy income in no time. Matilda Longbottom will cry rivers every night in jealousy."

Roxy grinned at her friend. "I suppose you're right. It _would_ be nice to have something to shove in stupid Longbottom's face for once. I mean, _she's_ top class and you know where I heard she's working right now?"

"Where?"

"Very nearly as a glorified secretary for Flourish and Blotts. She takes orders and owls them out to customers." Roxy smirked at the thought of her school rival working tediously every day at a monotonous job with little to offer her. "At least, even when Henrik's finally kicks me out, I'll have something of merit to put on my resume."

"That's the spirit," Jo replied. "Self-hating at best spirit, but spirit nonetheless! You'll be perfect! They'll love you. I mean, who _wouldn't_? They'd be stupid to fire you, honestly. Now all you have to do is tell your mum."

"Tell me what?"

Roxy whirled around to see her mum bustling through the doorway with an armful of supplies, a tired smile on her face. "Well?" she asked, looking from Roxy to Jo and back, the smile shifting to a look of confusion. "Tell me what?"


	7. When you're the youngest

" _Well?" she asked, looking from Roxy to Jo and back, the smile shifting to a look of confusion. "Tell me what?"_

"Mum!" Roxy gasped; Angelina wasn't supposed to be home for another hour, at least. "I thought you were with Aunt Katie! What're you doing home so early?" Her voice rose half an octave in shock and she stared up at her mother, struggling to formulate proper sentences. "We weren't doing anything!"

"Oh yeah Rox, _totally_ smooth. I bet she _definitely_ believes you now," Jo muttered under her breath; Roxy smacked her on the arm, giving her mother a nervous half-smile.

"Roxanne?" Mum looked over the two girls with a furrowed brow as she set her purse down on a spare chair. "You two are acting very strangely. Is everything alright? There aren't any—any boys here, are there Roxanne? You know how I feel about that sort of stuff while I'm not around."

This made Jo smirk, so Roxy hit her again for good measure. "No boys Mum, I swear. It's just me and Jo. In fact, we only just got up here from the shop. Uh—Anne!" Jo and Angelina jumped slightly at the force of Roxy's yelp. "Anne wants to talk to you, I almost forgot all about it! Important, er, business-type things that she says _need_ to be discussed. Super soon and the like, you know how those things are—if you don't jump on them soon, you'll never catch up. So—so you should, uh, totally go talk to her, like, _right_ now, you know? So you don't, uh, get behind."

"Anne can wait, I think." Her mum glanced at the door that led to their shop uneasily. "I only just got home, after all, and I'm sure Anne would respect me taking a breather before I discuss business with her. Besides," Mum said with a small grin, "she's _much_ too serious for me to hold her opinion very much credit."

"Same, Mrs W," Jo mumbled from the couch, one hand flopping dramatically across her forehead. " _Same_."

"Shut up Jo," Roxy grumbled before turning to her mother once more. "But why'd you come home so soon? Is Aunt Katie okay? Are Leanne and the babies okay?" Leanne was Roxy's not-by-blood cousin, the older daughter of her mum's friends, Katie and Lee Jordan. She was almost four months pregnant with twins.

Despite the five year age difference between the girls, Roxy and Leanne had always been close when they were younger, but now that Leanne was twenty-four and starting her own family, Roxy felt like Leanne was beginning to see her in the same way that most of her cousins were, as a little girl who was still too immature to be trusted.

But that didn't mean that Roxy didn't still care about her "cousin"; she wrote to Leanne frequently to ask for advice on a range of topics—homework, boyfriends, impending adulthood, and even how to deal with Roxy's mum, whom Roxy felt was only hovering _more_ often now that Roxy was getting older. And Leanne always caught Roxy up on her own life, of course.

"Yes, everything's fine Roxanne, there's no need to worry about them. Although you'd have a hard time convincing Colin of that, from the way he's always anxiously hovering over Leanne like she might give birth at any moment!" Colin Creevey—Leanne's husband, and perpetually nervous about nearly everything.

"Hey Mrs W, can I have some tea while I'm hear? Roxy's always going on about what _great_ tea you make," said Jo, grinning widely; Roxy went to hit her again, but Mum nodded, smiling widely as she invited them to follow after her.

"What are you doing?" Roxy hissed at her friend while her mum bustled about the kitchen, making three cups of what she promised was "the best tea you'll _ever_ have, guaranteed!" " _I've_ told you my mum is shit at making _anything_."

"Oh come on, she can't be _too_ bad," Jo whispered back. "Besides, I haven't been here in _ages_ —might as well milk this visitation for as long as I can."

"It's your funeral," muttered Roxy as Mum came over to the table with the tea, which even _smelt_ off, not at all like Grandmum's tea, which smelt of rosemary and tasted wonderful—Grandmum could cook and bake and do all sorts of motherly things that Roxy's mum had never picked up on. Sometimes, Roxy did wonder if the mothering gene had completely passed her mum over in favour of giving her incredibly skill in Quidditch and interfering with Roxy's life.

Roxy winced but smiled at her mother, taking one of the cups from her. Roxy didn't think now was quite the time to get into just _how_ bad Mum was at food and drinks—the woman could probably burn _water_ if she tried hard enough—but if Mum attempted to make them supper, then Roxy would be putting her foot down.

She didn't want to _poison_ Jo.

"I'm going to grab the mail," said Mum, leaving the two girls to awkwardly sip their tea and grimace at each other.

"I was wrong. This _is_ shit. Absolute shit." Jo scowled down at her drink. "I didn't think it was possible to ruin tea any more than the Americans already have, but I was wrong. I was _incredibly_ wrong. Merlin's pants, how can your mum not taste the absolute crap quality?"

Roxy only gave her friend an I-told-you-so glance, not feigning sympathy in the slightest. She tipped some of her drink out of the open window, letting it spill into the alleyway below. "I keep telling her not to cook anymore, but she never listens to me."

Roxy and Jo swapped stories for a few minutes—Roxy groaning about years of burnt roasts and dry-as-a-bone cakes, and Jo complaining about the number of potions her mother had blown up in her attempts to find the perfect cure to looking young.

"What is this Roxanne?" her mum asked, coming back into the kitchen, the Henrik's internship letter in her hands. "Why haven't I seen this before? It looks like an internship invitation. Where did you get invited to join—" she squinted down at the name. "Henrik's Potions Co.?" Mum went quite for a moment.

"Mum, I was going to tell you! Honestly I was, but I didn't know how to say what I wanted to without making a mess of things and—"

"Oh Roxanne!" Her mum moved to hug her as Jo looked awkwardly away from the two. "I'm so proud of you! I was honestly starting to get worried that no one had owled yet. You know, your brother received all sorts of invitations from plenty of prestigious positions as well—"

"Yes Mum, I know," Roxy grumbled darkly.

Mum didn't seem to notice as she continued. "—but he was _never_ invited to intern at Henrik's! I've heard a _lot_ of good news from Rose, she says they're every bit as grand as their reputations would have you think. Oh, this is great news Roxanne! Of course you'll be writing them right away to say yes! This is _such_ an honour—do you know how many people they invite every year? Only five! Five from the whole wizarding world and _my_ Roxanne was one of them!"

"I was actually thinking about telling them no, to be honest," Roxy said quietly, looking down at her tea; she didn't want to meet her mother's eyes, not when Roxy could clearly hear the excitement and enthusiasm in Mum's voice. _Mum_ clearly could see nothing wrong with Roxy writing off to say yes to Henrik's.

"So let me get this straight Roxanne. You received a letter from Henrik's Potions Co.—a company _highly_ praised for its quality potions. A company where you would not only excel, but where you would be able to make a name for yourself. And you're telling me that you're turning them _down_? Are you mad or just stupid?" Her mother was shrieking, her cheeks a dark red from anger.

"I ought to be going now," said Jo, clearly uncomfortable as she leapt from her seat, nearly upsetting her cup. "I think my mum's expecting me soon and—oh look! It's nearly seven in the evening, I'm _sure_ she's gotten worried by now!"

"Perhaps you ought to walk Jo out then Roxanne," Mum said icily, reaching across the table to grab the plates and cups, not even giving Roxy a chance to respond. Roxy watched at her mum bustled over to the sink, slamming everything into soapy water and scowling.

She knew it was probably smartest to not talk back—if her mum was cleaning the muggle way, it meant she was furious.

"I'll see you later, okay?" Roxy told Jo as she led her friend out of the flat. Jo gave her a sympathetic look, but Roxy only shook her head. "She's may be upset, but even my mum has to realise that I'm eighteen-and-a-half. She can't control what I do with my life."

* * *

Her mum didn't speak to Roxy for nearly three days—not after an hour's worth of screaming and throwing and threats between the two of them that ended with a surly and silent dinner of undercooked pasta.

But at ten-thirty in the morning that Sunday, Mum dropped by, knocking on Roxy's door to inform her that she needed to get dressed— _now_ —and that she ought to do something with her hair. "Look presentable for once in your life."

"Why?"

"It's Sunday. Sunday means dinner at your grandparents, no exceptions. And I won't have you embarrassing us like always by being late, so I want you to get _off_ of your bed and go get ready. We're leaving at a quart to noon and no later, do you hear me, young lady?"

Roxy rolled eyes but nodded and stood up to take a quick shower and brush her teeth; an hour and a half later, she was standing in front of the fireplace, listening to her mum rant about how they were late—but that was never any surprise—and couldn't Roxy find something more appropriate than a jumper to wear?

"Do you want us to run behind even more than we already are?" Roxy retorted. Her mum scowled, but tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fireplace.

"Let's go. Your grandmother is probably going into apoplectics trying to figure out why we're not there yet. _The Burrow!_ " and with that, Mum had disappeared into the green flames.

"Doubt it," grumbled Roxy to herself as she followed after her mum, dropping her own handful of powder and shouted, "the Burrow!" as well, remembering to tuck in her elbows and keep her eyes shut, lest she throw up.

Dinner was mostly a fairly normal affair, with Rose and James bickering at each other across the table while Lily gushed about Tolkien to anyone who would listen—a change in behaviour that amused many of the adults who had listened to years of Lily swearing she would _never_ fall in love with anyone, and each of whom had promised Lily that her opinion would change when she found "the one".

Sitting quietly in his seat—suspiciously quiet for a four year old—Teddy and Victoire's eldest, Remus, giggled as his father fed him bites of potato, pretending they were little broomsticks as Teddy placed each forkful in his son's mouth.

Louis and Hugo discussed the potential of a dragon reserve opening somewhere in Britain, which had been a desire of Louis' for years so that he could be closer to the family, instead of having to use Portkeys to travel back and forth between home and the dragon reserve in Romania.

Albus made faces at Roxy from across the table; Victoire got up three separate times to take care of her eleven month old son, William; Molly bragged about how she was being promoted—again—at work, which made Lucy roll her eyes and pretend to choke herself.

The adults took turns discussing politics of some incredibly boring nature that Roxy couldn't bring herself to even _pretend_ to care about, so she only continued to enjoy her food, enjoying every single minute that passed without some big " _family interruption_ " of some sort that almost always seemed to accompany these dinners.

Roxy had never understood _why_ her grandmother was so insistent on Sunday dinners as a family; more often than not, they ended in arguments and storming out and slammed doors.

Grandmum would sigh and say she ought to have expected as much, and Roxy would cross her fingers in the hopes that this would finally be the end of the weekly family dinners—yet the following Sunday, Mum would rush Roxy into wearing something " _appropriate for family_ " and usher the scowling teen over to their fireplace, complaining that they'd be late—again.

Family dinners also seemed to be the catalyst for a lot of important "family announcements". It was at a dinner that Teddy and Victoire had announced their engagement—to absolutely no one's surprise. It was at a dinner Uncle Ron had announced his decision to switch from an Auror to running the joke shop with Roxy's dad. And it had been at a family dinner that Dominique had run away, screaming that no one understood how she felt.

So it really shouldn't have shocked her as much that it was at a family dinner that her grandmum announced that and Grandpa were planning on taking a month off to travel around the world for their sixtieth anniversary, and that they would most likely need someone to look after the house for them while they were gone.

"Mostly it's just a simple job. You know, water the plants, de-gnome the garden, dust and sweep up, make sure no one tries to break through the wards—though with Harry and Teddy on so many missions out-of-country all the time, I'm sure that means there's hardly any real danger here at home! We wouldn't even mind if you went down the muggle village every now and then. The only real request we have is that you stay _at_ the house over-night and such."

"Well, _I_ certainly can't do it," Rose pronounced haughtily. "Han and I are just too busy with all the various forms and meetings right now—I _have_ to be around a mobile at all times at the moment, in case an agency calls us."

"I'm not available either. Too much practise lately, and we're probably going out-of-country soon enough as it is." James was barely comprehensible around the mouthful of food that he was still eagerly chewing. Roxy gave him a disgusted look, wondering for the millionth time why _she_ had to sit next to him.

"I fear we may not be available either, Gran," Victoire said apologetically, flashing Grandmum an I'm-so-sorry smile that fooled the adults, but not Roxy. "Teddy's been busy with missions lately." She patted her husband's arm. "Uncle Harry just keeps him _so_ preoccupied."

"It's so you two will stop having bloody kids," Roxy heard James grumble under his breath, and though Victoire's eyes flashed, she only continued to smile serenely while her son squalled in Victoire's arms.

"Well Lucy and I certainly cannot," said Louis and Lucy nodded in agreement. "She and Rayna and I are planning on checking out flats soon—do you _know_ how expensive it's gotten to travel back and forth between here and Romania? Bloody _mad_. I've talked plenty about trying to get a group going closer to home, but they've yet to listen to me."

"And Lily is currently unavailable as well as she will be _extremely_ busy," Lily said with a laugh. "Like, _all_ summer. So she cannot house-sit." Talking in the third person was a strange habit that Lily seemed to have picked up recently—and one that she refused to drop, much to everyone else's annoyance.

"What exactly is it that our dear Lily will be doing this summer that she can't watch over her grandparents' house?" asked Aunt Ginny, raising an eyebrow while James and Albus snickered behind their mum's back.

"Oh, this and that, you know. Important things," Lily replied vaguely, waving her hand.

"Like getting a job? Moving out of our house finally?"

"Gin," Uncle Harry interrupted, placing a hand on Aunt Ginny's arm. "Now is not the time to be having this argument." Aunt Ginny scowled into her dinner place, but nodded.

"So that leaves Molly, Al, Hugo, or Roxy," said Grandmum brightly, looking over at the remaining grandchildren, who all glanced amongst each other uncomfortably. "Surely at least _one_ of you isn't so busy with your own life that you could help out your dear grandparents for a month? There would be enough money set aside to pay for groceries and the like. All you'd have to do is stay here. I assure you, the Burrow is a very lovely place during July and August."

Hugo looked down at his place and blushed while Molly muttered about things beginning to pick up finally with her long-term boyfriend and how they were possibly going to Venice soon, she wasn't sure but it was best to not get tangled up in any other plans at the moment. Albus, to the point as ever, simply stated that he'd rather not house-sit at the moment; Aunt Ginny scowled at him, but Al only shrugged and muttered that it was the truth—and wasn't that what his parents had always taught him to do, tell the truth?

"Roxy?" Grandmum asked, looking at Roxy with curiosity.

She could feel her cousins' eyes on her, and the way her mum was glancing pointedly at Roxy, and she sighed. There was just no way of getting out of this without sounding like a bad person, was there? Everyone else _knew_ she wasn't busy, and Mum would be furious if Roxy upset Grandmum, no matter that all the other cousins had already said no first. If _only_ she'd been faster to come up with an excuse! If only she'd said yes to that stupid internship—

"Roxy. Your grandmother asked you a question, and it _is_ incredibly disrespectful to not answer her," said Mum loudly. Roxy mentally glared at her mother; she had heard that her mum was once mischievous and fun, but Roxy couldn't remember Mum ever being that way in _her_ lifetime.

"I suppose so Gran," muttered Roxy, looking down at her dinner forlornly. She didn't _hate_ the Burrow—there were plenty of good memories of chasing Freddie around in the yard and playing in the creek with Lily, but the Burrow had always felt too wrapped up in memories of her father, who had filled Roxy's head with tales of his childhood pranks.

She didn't _want_ to watch over the Burrow for a whole month. She didn't even want to watch it for a day; Roxy didn't really "do" responsibility—that was much more for the likes of Molly or Victoire, but Grandmum was smiling so happily at Roxy that she couldn't very well take her offer back.

And the other cousins were sighing in relief as well, each glad that it was little Roxy who had been talked into the job so that they didn't have to, so that _they_ could keep doing whatever they wanted with their lives instead of having to interrupt and change everything for a month.

"Oh Roxy, thank you so much!" said Grandmum happily, smiling at her youngest grandchild like Roxy had just announced that she had announced herself as the second coming of Merlin himself. "You don't know how happy this makes your grandfather and I. we've been planning this trip for nearly a year now—after all, you're only married for sixty years once!"

"If you've been planning for a year, why hadn't you already found someone to watch the house for you?" Roxy grumbled to herself, but to her grandmother, she only said, "Of _course,_ Gran. I would be absolutely _devastated_ if you didn't get to go on your special anniversary holiday just because of something as trivial as the house."

Dinner wrapped up shortly thereafter, with Victoire and Molly jumping up to offer help washing the dishes. Grandpa offered after-dinner drinks to anyone who was interested; Uncle Ron and Uncle Bill took him up on that, but Uncle Percy mumbled some excuse about a new diet that didn't allow for alcohol—he was campaigning for a second term as Minister of Magic and had recently become obsessed with his appearance, as he had grown quite pudgy with age.

"We'd love to Arthur," said Uncle Harry, "but Gin and I really ought to go. She's off to report on a match early tomorrow and we've got extra training for some of the newer recruits—which I _expect_ Teddy to be at." He shot a meaningful glance at his godson, who waved off Uncle Harry with a "yeah, yeah, Harry, I won't turn up _too_ smashed."

"Angelina? Would you like to stay for a spell?" asked Grandpa. "Perhaps Molly and I can go over all the things we need for Roxy to do while we're gone—of course, I'm sure Molly'll leave a list around somewhere, but it doesn't hurt to have an expectation of what we want her to do."

"Why not? You know, I think this will be a good lesson in responsibility for Roxanne" Mum replied, while Roxy groaned. Something told her the next month wouldn't be _nearly_ as easy-going as her grandparents wanted Roxy to believe.


	8. There's no way this is real

To Lily's credit, she made it a full twelve days before approaching Roxy about hosting a party at the now mostly-abandoned Burrow. Roxy had predicted that her newly wild-girl cousin would only last two days, three at most if she attempted to handle the situation with a little decorum. Roxy suspected, though, that she had accidentally let it slip to Tolkien that her grandmum's house was currently empty except for Roxy, and he had most likely put the pressure on her to get a party started at the famed Weasley Burrow.

After all, her grandparents' house was well-known, thanks to media sources such as _The Daily Prophet_ , _Witch Weekly_ , and countless others that had become so numerous that Roxy typically tuned out what they were saying.

As the younger daughter of a world-renowned Quidditch player as well as _the_ man who had opened and run Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, Roxy had found herself in the papers on numerous occasions—once, she and Lily had laughed themselves silly at the sight of a blurry picture of the two girls hovering a few feet above the ground with the caption _"Famed Quidditch mums Ginny Potter and Angelina Weasley allow young daughters to endanger themselves. 8 and 6 year old girls go unsupervised on unstable broomsticks!_ "

(It had been especially ridiculous since both their mothers were actually just out of frame, observing the girls and keeping them from trying to fly too high.)

But the public eye had always been turned to the Weasleys, and because the Burrow was _the_ origin of such offspring, she supposed it made sense that there was such an interest that bordered on obsession with the old house. It wouldn't be the first time someone had approached her about being allowed to see the inside of what many in the wizarding world considered to be a monument to the war.

(Never mind that there were still people _living_ inside the 'monument', or that their descendants were fiercely loyal to their grandparents and were therefore justly determined to keep the outsiders where they belonged— _outside_.)

"So?" Lily tilted her head, eyes widened in reminiscence of a small animal, as though she believed she would be able to 'cute' her way into getting Roxy to go along with her plans. "Can't you just see it? I mean, we'd have _tons_ more room than we've ever had at Mia's…"

She continued to babble on about "their" party, but Roxy tuned her out; how was it that Lily, who had always made an effort to discourage Roxy from hanging out with people like Tolkien Smith or Mia and Mohammed Itterman, yet now she was acting as though they had all been her best mates since nappies?

Lily had changed so much in the past two years since she had graduated; Roxy had overheard Aunt Ginny once telling Grandmum that she worried for the day that Lily would come home with bubble gum pink hair and a nose ring.

Roxy wouldn't be surprised if her cousin ever did something like that soon—after all, long gone was the bubbly, happy-go-lucky girl who stood up for herself, having apparently been replaced by some frantic 'look-at-me' party-girl who was obsessed with how she looked to others, even to those magazines and newspapers that they had once laughed at.

"…and Tolkien was thinking that, well…you know how he is. But, er, he was thinking that maybe we could even go down to the muggle village. Y'know, pop in, say hello to all the dears? It'd be fun, don't you think? And you're not even listening to me, are you Rox?" Lily sighed, calling her younger cousin's attention back to the wild redhead.

"Sorry, what? I was just, er…"

Lily raised an eyebrow at her. "Getting distracted?"

Roxy nodded; that had been happening a lot more as of late. Roxy found that the conversations of those around her were becoming less and less interesting, the mundane habits and daily rituals of polite conversation merely boring her until she found herself only able to focus on her own thoughts and everything else became white noise.

She wondered if that was her body's way of telling Roxy that she was turning into a selfish little bitch—something that Roxy had always suspected would turn out to be true about herself.

"So? Yes or no to the party?" Lily asked anxiously, poking Roxy in the side and giving the younger girl a smile. "I'd help clean up afterwards, I _swear_. I mean, this is _my_ gran's house as well, and it'd be rude to let everyone trash it and then abandon you to have to clean up the mess all by yourself when I'm the one who pushed you to even have a party."

Say what you will about Lily, but at least she _tried_ to be a good person sometimes, as she had been raised to be; Roxy, on the other hand, had given up on pretending to play the part of the 'good little girl' the day the Sorting Hat had placed her into Slytherin.

Roxy sighed, wondering if there was any real way for her to get out of throwing a party here. But Lily was giving her those puppy dog eyes and reminding her that "it would only be for one night, Rox! After all, you deserve some fun!" And she _did_ deserve some fun, didn't she? Watching this boring house for a whole month with nothing to do and barely anyone to talk to?

"Fine," Roxy finally said, caving in. Lily squealed happily, throwing her arms around Roxy and kissing the top of her forehead.

"Oh yay, yay! I love you _sooo_ much Roxy! You're the best, the absolute best! You're just bloody fantastic, do you know that? Wow! Thanks a whole bunch! I'm gonna go tell Tolkien so we can get set up! How does seven tonight sound for you? Oh good, thanks Roxy!" She was gone before Roxy could protest, running out the door and down past the apparition wards.

"You're welcome?" Roxy mumbled to the air, scratching her head in bewilderment. After a minute, though, she began to look around for cups and plates. She suspected they were going to need a lot of drinks to keep the party going. "I'm definitely gonna regret this tomorrow, aren't I?"

* * *

The party was in full swing by nine that night, with people dancing wildly, drinking, and generally enjoying themselves. A few had initially been in awe to find themselves in _the_ Burrow, but after a few drinks, everyone seemed to have gotten over it. They were certainly trashing the place as if it were any other house.

People kept making their way over to where Roxy was nursing an almost completely full bottle of Butterbeer, sitting— _sulking,_ really—on the couch in her grandmum's sitting room. They thanked her for holding the party and complimenting the house; Roxy only nodded and made polite conversation until they left to talk to someone else. She didn't feel very sociable tonight, for some odd reason. Perhaps because the party had been going for over two hours and she hadn't seen Lily since it started, and Jo had owled Roxy to tell her she couldn't come over, having become completely swamped at her new job.

Even Kieran had told her he was unavailable for the night, leaving Roxy to entertain a bunch of near-strangers for several hours, and with no desire to really _do_ anything. She sighed, fingernails scraping against the wrapper of her bottle.

Perhaps she ought to go find Lily—or perhaps _not_. The older girl was probably making out with Tolkien in one of the bedrooms upstairs, and Roxy would rather not walk into the middle of that.

"Hey Roxy," said Emily Maccabee, suddenly appearing over Roxy, little Faith in her arms. "It's nice to see you again."

"Er, you too," Roxy replied, thrown off. She hadn't expected to see Emily of all people here—and with a little girl in tow as well? "I'm surprised you're here tonight."

"Oh, well." Emily shrugged. "I'm not really here for the party, to be honest. There's something I came to do, and I thought now would be the best time to get it done, really."

Roxy was curious. "What do you need?"

"Can you look after her for me?" Emily asked suddenly, setting Faith down on the couch next to Roxy. "I, uh, I have to go talk to someone and, er…well, I just need maybe ten minutes. And I, uh, I trust you to watch her—" Roxy had to say that Emily didn't seem to really mean it, but she nodded willingly. "—so would you mind too terribly? You two could catch up while I'm gone."

"Um…sure, yeah." She didn't really know how to say no. Did she even _want_ to say no? After all, this was her niece, and they ought to get to know each other, oughtn't they?

"Okay. Thanks."

And just like that, Emily was gone, lost in the crowd of people who were talking, drinking, and dancing. It was almost as if she had never been there at all, leaving behind Roxy and Faith to stare at each other on the couch. Roxy briefly—panicking for a second—worried that Emily would never come back, but she quashed that feeling. Emily would never just abandon her own daughter, would she?

Roxy looked down at Faith, unsure of what to say to the four-and-a-half year old. The last time she had been anywhere near the little girl, it had been for only a mere five minutes, and Roxy had been at least a little tipsy.

There was also the awkward part of attempting to connect with Faith in that Roxy could not look down at her niece without seeing her brother in the curly, dark hair and her pretty brown eyes. Faith just looked too much like her father.

"So do you have a middle name?" she asked, cringing inwardly; how was it that she had never cared enough before to even find out her own niece's full name? Why had she never cared before now?

Faith nodded and slowly sounded out her name. "Mummy says my name is Faith Mackayla Maccabee. My birfday is on the fouwth of Jan-u-airee. I am four-and-a-half years old." Faith held out four fingers, grinning, and then looked up expectantly at Roxy. "You're supp'sed to tell me now."

"O-oh." Roxy couldn't remember being four years old; was this how they all were, wanting to dig out every scrap of information that they could find? Had she been this intrusive, this curious, to learn about everything that was not herself and therefore already known? "Um, well, I'm Roxanne, but you already knew that, so, uh…"

"No, you have to tell me your _full_ name." Faith crossed her arms, determination sparking in her big brown eyes. "That's how it works."

"Uh, well, I—I, um, am Roxanne Raechell Weasley. Um, uh, I was, uh, born on the twenty-eight of September, and I'm eighteen, almost nineteen." Roxy wondered what it would be like if things had been different, if Faith was a Weasley, like she was. If Roxy had known the little girl for Faith's whole life, instead of only having met her for the first time only a month ago—what would that have been like, to have been involved in her niece's infancy?

Faith continued to chatter to Roxy for several minutes, telling her all about the various colourings and doodles that Faith had been working on at her day-care. She seemed to not mind the crowd of noisy people, chatting happily, until she suddenly fell silent. Roxy turned to look at the little girl, curious as to why she had stopped speaking.

"Are you alright Faith?"

"There's somebody here," murmured the little girl, leaning into Roxy's arm, her curls brushing just under Roxy's chin.

"Yes Faith, there are a _lot_ of people here. More people than Lily told me there would be, to be honest." Roxy looked around at all the party-goers, wondering where Emily had gone off to, and when she would be coming back. It certainly _felt_ like it had already been ten minutes—and then some.

"No, there's _somebody here_ ," Faith insisted, pointing to a corner of the room where nobody was; the area was, strangely, empty despite the mass of people that filled her grandmother's sitting room. Roxy watched as a couple drifted over to the corner only to wander back off with a dazed look as if pushed away by some unseen force.

 _Somebody. Here. In my grandparents' house._ _Someone that no one can see except for Faith. And usually unseen things aren't just here for a nice chat and some Butterbeer_. Roxy groaned. Why did these sorts of things always have to happen to her? Why couldn't the party just go normally—only a few shattered vases and angry couples being tossed out of the bed tomorrow morning?

"Faith? Can you see the 'somebody'? Can you tell me what you see when you look over there?" Could somebody have snuck in with an Invisibility Cloak? Was it possibly a reporter hoping to get an inside scoop into the life of the Weasleys?

 _Maybe it's a ghost_ , she thought, and then laughed. How ridiculous would that be? A ghost coming back just to sit in the corner of her grandmum's sitting room and mess with partiers? Besides, everyone knew that the ghosts had all disappeared _ages_ ago—before Roxy was even alive. No one knew where they had gone to, or why they'd all suddenly left; just that, one day, they had all faded away without a word.

Roxy had heard stories about an old Hogwarts professor who had been a ghost—supposedly, he'd died one afternoon and simply continued teaching that afternoon like nothing had ever happened. But he was gone now, along with the rest of the ghosts, and had been replaced by a normal, _living_ professor.

So if it definitely wasn't a ghost, so it had to be someone who was alive, and probably not the sort of people that Roxy wanted hanging around her house.

Faith squinted, and then grinned, clapping her small hands together in excitement. "It's Daddy, it's Daddy! He's come to say hello!" She slipped off the couch, but before she could run over to 'Daddy', Roxy caught the little girl by the arm. "Roxy, that's my _daddy_. I have to say hi!"

"That's not your father." Roxy shook her head and scooped the girl up. Faith was messing with her. It was much more likely that there was no one in that corner at all and people were avoiding it because…because it was darkly lit or something. "There's no one there, Faith."

"No! That's Daddy!" Faith squirmed in Roxy's arms, struggling to get down. "That's Daddy, it's Daddy, I pwomise! He wants to say hello to us. He wants to say hello to me and you."

Roxy shook her head again. She didn't understand why Faith was being this way all of a sudden; just a few minutes ago, Faith had been happily sitting there, telling Roxy her whole life story, and now she was playing this awful game with Roxy.

 _But she's only four. She doesn't understand that Freddie is gone. Maybe it's just a thing little kids do, imagining a parent to replace the real one. But has she ever even seen a photo of him before? Has Emily ever shown her a picture of Freddie?_

"Come on, Faith, let's go find your mum and get you home before this party gets any wilder. Besides," Grandmum's clock began chiming in the other room, "it's definitely past your bedtime. I'm surprised your mum even brought you here tonight—or that she came herself. We haven't seen her around since—uh, I mean, we haven't seen her in a while."

Faith tried to squirm out of Roxy's grasp one last time, but finally gave up and laid her head across Roxy's shoulder. "Mummy says that par-dees aren't for people like her. She says all the al-coo-hull is bad for her or something. Mummy says she used to go to par-dees, but it's no fun an'mo'. That's what Mummy says."

"Well, your mummy is probably right. After all, she's adult." Roxy couldn't help but nervously glance over her shoulder from time to time, expecting to find someone sitting in the previously empty corner, someone who didn't belong here with the rest of them. She shook her head. _You're being paranoid again, Rox. First thinking someone was watching you at the graduation ceremony, and now you're imagining ghosts are at your party? Better make sure you aren't losing it._

Roxy wandered up the stairs, occasionally knocking on doors, calling out Emily's name; she received a few disgruntled 'bugger off' responses from locked rooms, but Emily did not come out. Roxy scowled, heading further up the stairs, passing by one of the many bedrooms that had been added on over the years.

And then she stopped, noticing that someone had placed a sign up on the door that definitely hadn't been hanging when she had come up here earlier to check. _'Property of Fred & George Weasley. Enter at own risk.'_ The sign was old, the edges torn and peeling, and the whole thing was beginning to yellow.

Roxy recalled seeing a similar sign—eerily similar—sitting in her grandparents' shed when she had gone exploring in there as a young girl. Was it the same one? No, it couldn't possibly be the same sign, unless…perhaps someone had broken into the shed and thought it would be funny to hang the sign up while she wasn't paying attention.

"That's where Daddy sleeps," Faith whispered, sounding much more serious than any four year old had a right to. "He likes it in there. That's what Daddy told me."

Roxy had half a mind to scream at the little girl, but she knew that it wouldn't solve her problems to start berating a child about the impossibilities of her father sleeping in this bedroom. She took a deep breath to keep calm.

As she read the sign again, though, Roxy could almost understand why Faith thought someone might be in there. The door seemed to call to her, to whisper her name, inviting her inside to see what secrets this old bedroom hid. The hand that wasn't tightly wrapped around Faith was reaching out, stretching towards the door handle, and though she tried to resist, it felt like something was pulling her forward. She _had_ to open the door, _had_ to make sure that no one was inside.

The noise from downstairs had faded. The walls of the house itself had faded, leaving just Roxy and the door handle and the sign. Even Faith was suddenly weightless, like she had run off downstairs; Roxy half-suspected that if she looked down at where the girl was, Faith would no longer be in her arm. It was just her and this room that was beckoning her closer.

"Roxy? Faith? I've been looking all over for you guys. Where have you been?" Suddenly, the noise came back, and so did the weight of Faith, making Roxy stagger as the strange desire to open the door left her. Emily was standing on the edge of the landing, staring at them both. "People said they saw you coming up here and..." She peered at Roxy. "Are you alright, dear?"

Roxy shook her head, trying to clear her mind. Why was she up here again? She couldn't even recall having gone up this far…hadn't she been looking for something or someone? _You were looking for Freddie_. No, that wasn't right. She couldn't have been looking for him, that would be silly.

"Roxy?" Emily asked again, louder this time, and Roxy stared at her, the spell finally broken. "Are you okay? You were just staring at that door. Did you, like, take something while I was gone? Or are you drunk? What's going on?"

"Mummy!" cried Faith, leaping from Roxy's grasp to run to her mother. "I saw Daddy! He's wif all the people, but Roxy doesn't be-leaf me." Emily frowned and looked at Roxy in confusion, but the younger girl only shrugged. She was still a bit thrown off. Had they seen someone downstairs? She couldn't remember.

"Come on then, love, we ought to be going." Emily hoisted her daughter up in her arms, giving Roxy a smile. "Thanks for watching her while I was gone. I really appreciate it."

"Yeah," said Roxy absently, waving her hand. Then she remembered something. "Hey Emily? You said you had to talk to someone. Who was it?"

Emily didn't meet her gaze, eyes shifting awkwardly towards the floor. "Oh, er…they didn't show up, actually. I guess I'll see them eventually, though, so there's no harm done." She shrugged, looking nervously around. "But, uh, I should really be taking Faith home now. I shouldn't really have brought her here in the first place, but there was no one able to watch her on such short notice, so…"

Roxy nodded as Emily made her way down the stairs back into the throng of people. Roxy remained on the landing for a few moments longer, eyes drifting back towards the sign. _'Property of Fred and George Weasley. Enter at own risk.'_

"There's no one in there, stupid," she told herself. "This is why you were never in Ravenclaw." She headed back downstairs, hoping she could find Lily so they could get flat out drunk and Roxy could forget everything that had happened in the last hour.


	9. Connections to the enemy

Just as Roxy suspected, when she had finally kicked everyone out just before midnight, Lily was nowhere to be found, and the only recollection that anyone else could give Roxy was of seeing the flaming-haired girl sneaking off with _someone_ who was oddly reminiscent of Tolkien Smith. Roxy was left behind to clean up the Burrow by herself, which she did with much grumbling and threats to Lily's life the next time she saw her.

When she finally went to bed at almost three in the morning, she climbed the stairs slowly, exhausted from all that she had had to do. Roxy stopped just short of the landing where the sign ' _Property of Fred and George Weasley_ ' hung and slipped back down one set of stairs.

She had no desire to deal with any weird 'things' in the house, whether they were real or just paranoid delusions brought on by alcohol and stress.

* * *

Two days later, Roxy got up and prepared for the day; after a quick—cold—shower, she picked out a blouse that wasn't _too_ casual but also didn't make it seem like she was trying very hard to dress up. Breakfast consisted of burnt toast and eggs, and then she headed outside to check the wards one last time. It would be just her luck that someone picked today of all days to break into the Burrow—when she wouldn't even be on the property.

Today was her uncle Harry's forty-eighth birthday, and she knew that Mum would have more than a few choice words to say to Roxy if she didn't make at least a brief appearance at the Potter house to say hello. At least Mum wasn't expecting her to bring a present—Roxy had never been very good at figuring out what sort of things other people would like, and she would _never_ have been able to figure out what Uncle Harry would want.

Finally deciding that there was nothing else at the house for her to do, and that she could put it off no longer, Roxy stepped outside of the wards and concentrated on her aunt and uncle's house, Disapparating from the grounds with a small pop.

When she opened her eyes, Roxy was standing in front of the Potter house, a large, pretty place that was absolutely _massive_ compared to the small flat that Roxy had grown up in; she knew there were enough bedrooms for all three of the Potter children, not to mention a spare room for Teddy and two sitting rooms. It was two-storey and had a large backyard—Roxy recalled hours-long games of hide-and-seek spent with the Potter children.

"Roxy!" Aunt Ginny bustled out of the front door to greet Roxy, her brown eyes shining merrily as she came over to hug the girl. "It's wonderful to see you again! How's staying at the Burrow doing you? Lily says she's stopped by to visit a few times already—" Roxy snorted, but Aunt Ginny didn't seem to notice. "—and though we _do_ all miss Mum's cooking while she's gone, I've no doubt that the rest of their holiday will fly right by and soon she'll be back."

Aunt Ginny led her around the side of the house to where the gate was; very nearly the entire family was already here. Uncle Percy, Aunt Audrey, and Aunt Hermione were loudly discussing Ministry work while Uncle Ron occasionally threw in random comments that made the other three adults roll their eyes at him.

Albus, Lily, and Rose were setting up a table full of food while James stacked presents up in a teetering pile that would probably fall over at any moment. Roxy waved hello at her mother, who nodded back before continuing her discussion with Hugo.

"You know Roxy, we're all so proud of you. Tenth in your year is _very_ excellent. I don't know if Harry and I properly congratulated you last month, but I wanted to make sure you knew that you've done excellently, considering all that's happened…" Aunt Ginny continued chattering, one arm still wrapped around Roxy's shoulder when the girl spotted someone across the yard that she had hoped to never see again.

"What's Matilda Longbottom doing here?" Roxy asked, not able to keep the scowl off of her face. The girl was sitting down with her two sisters, fourteen-year-old Alice who would be a fourth year Slytherin in September, and eleven-year-old Hannah who would be a first year this year.

"You remember, don't you Roxy? Neville and Harry have _always_ been friends." There was a warning tone in her aunt's voice, hinting that it wouldn't be very smart of Roxy to start any fights here, at her uncle's birthday party. "It would be rude not to invite him, especially since his birthday was only yesterday. Besides, Matilda isn't a bad girl, if you give her a chance. Maybe you two could talk and sort out whatever issues you have."

Roxy stared at her aunt, wondering when the cool ex-Quidditch player had become such a…such a _mum_. _'Talk it out_ '? That was what you told a little kid who was having a temper tantrum, not an eighteen-year-old who was staring daggers across the yard at the girl who had made her life at Hogwarts harder than was necessary.

She took a deep breath, trying to maintain her composure. Mum would _kill_ her if Roxy started a fight with Matilda. "I think I'm going to get something to drink, actually," Roxy said loudly, untangling herself from her aunt's grip. "Thanks for inviting me Aunt Gin."

"Oh…alright." Her aunt sounded disappointed that Roxy wasn't attempting to reach out with an olive branch to make peace with Matilda Longbottom, but she only tilted her head and sighed before making her way over to the now squabbling Potter children, who were bickering about the presents that had fallen into the treacle tart.

Roxy wandered off in search for someone to talk to when her eyes fell on her older cousin Lucy, who was sitting apart from the rest of the family, a small piece of cake sitting on a plate next to her, with only a few bites taken from it.

Her cousin Lucy was, well…the best way to describe Lucy was _eccentric_. A bit like Luna Scamander, though without the fascination with non-existent animals. Lucy seemed to live in her own little bubble most of the time and hardly noticed when anyone was making fun of her. She had been a seventh year Hufflepuff when Roxy first entered Hogwarts, and even now, Roxy couldn't really say she _knew_ Lucy very well.

Though she was not on very good terms with _most_ of the family, Lucy had taken to avoiding their cousin Victoire most of all, seemingly almost _frightened_ by the sight of the elegant blonde; though no one had initially understand why Lucy seemed so bothered by Victoire every time the family got together, Lucy's sister, Molly, had eventually informed them that Lucy—innocent, sweet Lucy that no one had ever even known had a _boyfriend_ —had been pregnant.

The baby, if it had lived, would have only been three months younger than Remus. Lucy, despite having lost her unborn child four years ago, didn't seem to be recovering. She had lived with Molly up until this spring, but had moved in with Louis in May. Lucy had no job, she hardly ever spoke to anyone, and Louis had mentioned that Lucy had nightmares that woke him up because she couldn't stop screaming.

Roxy, of course, had never lost a child, but she could imagine it was probably pretty difficult to have to come to family dinners every Sunday afternoon and see Victoire coo over little Remus and William and wonder what it would have been like to have a child of your own.

"Hello Roxy," said Lucy when Roxy sat down next to the slender redhead. After Roxy, Lucy was the shortest of the Weasley cousins; at only one hundred and fifty-five centimetres, she was just a little taller than Roxy was, but was just as thin. The veins on her wrists were very blue against Lucy's pale, nearly _translucent_ , skin. "You seem in need of advice."

Roxy shrugged. "Maybe I do, though I'm so turned around at this point that I couldn't even tell you _what_ I would need advice about. I mean, this is all so confusing and I barely even really believe that any of it is actually happening outside of my own head."

Lucy tilted her head, indicating for Roxy to elaborate.

"Well, it's just that I feel like weird things have been happening to me since—since, like, graduation. I feel like I'm always being watched, and I wake up in places where I _know_ I didn't go to sleep. And—and then, two days ago, Faith and Emily were over—"

"At your party."

Roxy gave her cousin a startled look, but the other girl only shrugged and gave her a serene smile. "R-right, at my party. And, well, Faith kept saying that there was _someone_ in the house t-that didn't belong. Then, later, I went upstairs and I felt like something was just, um, calling me into one of the bedrooms. It was so weird, you know?"

Lucy continued to smile, which did very little to make Roxy feel better. "I know what's going on Roxy. They're talking to you finally. They are trying to reach out to you, to make their presence known to you. Oh, this is wonderful! You've been chosen by them—you should be proud Roxy, very few people are chosen by them, but they want you to see them."

"Who does?"

"The spirits, of course." Lucy leaned back, looking pleased with herself. Roxy stared at her, slack-jawed. Maybe the similarities between Lucy and Aunt Luna were more prominent than Roxy had ever guessed before.

"Sorry, _what_? Did you say spirits? As—as in, like ghosts?"

"Of course. Though they are little more than mere shadows now, doomed to roam the earth." Lucy shook her head, forlorn. "The poor dears. I'm not surprised that they have picked you, though. You're very much like me."

Roxy bristled slightly at that comment. She liked Lucy well enough, but it was hardly a compliment to be compared to her slightly mad cousin.

"Lucy, you _do_ realise that all of the ghosts disappeared ages ago, right? Like, over twenty years. So whatever is attempting to 'communicate' with me—if that's even what's really happening and I'm _not_ losing my mind—then it isn't ghosts or spirits or spectres. They aren't around anymore—and besides that, even if they _were_ , why would I be their person of choice to bother?"

"As I said, ghosts look for people like you or me, people more attuned to grief, because they know that we understand the sting of death more easily than the average person." Roxy had the sudden urge to slap the serene smile off of Lucy's face. Was she making fun of Roxy now?

Roxy squinted at her cousin, but Lucy seemed genuine enough. She obviously believed whole-heartedly that what she was saying was true—as bafflingly impossible as the whole situation was.

Lucy _had_ always insisted that she was more 'in tune' with 'supernatural forces' than the average person, but when it came to the ghosts, she just _had_ to be wrong. Everyone—from the most official and certified members of the Ghost and Ghoul Division at the Ministry to even the youngest child—knew that the ghosts were gone and they wouldn't be coming back.

So Lucy was doing her normal self—she _had_ to be, seeing things that weren't there, like her 'imaginary friends' again, the ones she had seen as a little girl and at Hogwarts, which had gotten her teased quite frequently by other students. The ghosts were just another fantasy for Lucy, who wasn't able to handle reality and so created ghostly friends to keep her company. They _couldn't_ be real.

Lucy smiled at Roxy once more, though this time, her corners twitched and struggled to maintain a happy appearance. "You don't believe me." Roxy started to protest, not wanting to hurt Lucy's feelings, but the older girl only held up her hands. "It's okay, I understand that you don't. It took so many people long enough to believe that they were gone and you have always lived in a world devoid of ghosts—or, rather, what you _believe_ to be devoid. It is the only life you know, so I don't blame you for being hesitant about their return."

Roxy looked down at her hands, befuddled. Lucy sounded so—so _sure_ of herself, so confident in her beliefs, as preposterous as they were. Because the ghosts had left, hadn't they? All the spirits and poltergeists and such—they were all _gone_ , weren't they? Packed up and left for something else. Perhaps they, after centuries of being barely-there spectres, had decided to move on to something better, something more interesting.

She could understand the sentiment of wanting to change your existence so drastically that you ran away from everything you'd ever known. Roxy had dreamt of doing something similar; disappearing into thin air, waking up one day with a new name and a new life where everything in the past was gone for good.

When she looked up again, it was to find the seat next to her was now empty. Lucy had slipped off, floating across the yard, looking every bit the ethereal faery that she always spoke of. Lucy had all the grace that Roxy had never achieved—and never would.

Roxy shivered against a sudden breeze, wishing she had thought to bring a light jacket. She noticed Professor Longbottom and Uncle Harry laughing together over cups of punch, and she wondered if that would be her and Jo in thirty years, attending each other's birthday parties, their children running amok, and having a laugh about the old times.

She tried to imagine it, picturing Joanna and some dark stranger, two or three little kids at their feet. Roxy smiled at the thought, but when she tried to insert herself and Kieran into the thought, with a daughter or a son of her own, she couldn't see it.

 _Well_ , Roxy thought to herself, _that's not very much of a surprise, is it? You've never been able to picture a future with him, really. Kieran's nice, but you want something more…_ she couldn't finish the sentence, because, to be honest, Roxy didn't know _what_ she wanted.

And not just when it came to future partners—she didn't know at all what she wanted. Her time to sign up for an internship with Henrik's was running short—Roxy had, at best, two weeks to make a decision—and yet she couldn't make up her mind about whether or not that was the right choice for her or not.

Her go-to defence had always been that Roxy didn't want to rush into things, to make a hasty decision only to regret it six months or a year down the road, but she knew the truth; Roxy had no clue what she intended to do with herself for the next forty or fifty years. Sure she liked making potions, but what if it was too challenging or not challenging enough?

All of her other cousins—even flighty Lucy and can't-tie-me-down Lily—seemed to have _some_ sort of idea of what they were going to do. Lucy at least had her delusions of ghosts that had nothing better to do than harass Roxy. Lily was a photographer for _The Quibbler_ , when she wasn't too busy getting drunk off her arse.

Even Dominique had apparently known what she wanted to do with herself, even if all that was had been to throw herself into the Thames and give up on everyone and everything.

"You're doing some hard thinking, aren't you?" A small blonde had taken up Lucy's seat, quietly nibbling at a sandwich. She was slightly chubby, but had high cheekbones and a small nose; Roxy took a moment to place her as Alice, Professor Longbottom's middle daughter. The Slytherin.

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, you just seem so… _intense_." Alice shrugged. "Like you're really concentrating on something hard. That's how my mum gets when she's trying to remember something. Her face goes all screwed-up, like this," Alice wrinkled up her nose, furrowed her brow, and closed her eyes, "and you were doing something sort've similar, so I thought maybe you were trying to think about something that takes a lot of effort."

Roxy carefully looked the younger girl over, curious how such an insightful little girl hadn't been placed into Ravenclaw. "Hm. I suppose I was."

"Am I interrupting? Mum doesn't like it when I interrupt."

"No, you're fine." Roxy remembered asking a similar question to her older cousins, trying—and failing—to get their attention because she had a question. "You're a Slytherin, right?"

"Yep." Alice _seemed_ proud enough of herself, chest pushed out and the hint of a smile playing at the edges of her lips. "Dad and Mum were shocked at first—though that makes a bit of sense, doesn't it? Neville Longbottom, Gryffindor extraordinaire, war hero, and his daughter gets tossed in the house of snakes?" Alice rolled her eyes. "But you understand how it is. You were a Slytherin too."

Roxy nodded. She remembered Alice a little better now. The strange girl who wore the boy's uniform all the time and who slept on the couches in their common room instead of in a dorm with the other Slytherin girls. Everyone had always made fun of her a little, because Alice was just a bit _off_ , just a bit too different.

"What're you gonna be, a fourth year?"

"Yeah, and I can't wait. Mum says it's the last real year before they start pushing you to 'be an adult' and start making decisions about what you want in life—" Roxy thought Mrs. Longbottom had the right idea. "—though Tilly's always trying to convince me that _every_ year is the year I need to start focusing more." Alice grimaced.

"Don't you like your sister?"

Alice raised an eyebrow at Roxy, who only looked down at the girl innocently. "She used to complain about you all the time. ' _That Weasley!_ '" Alice matched her sister's high pitches almost perfectly, making Roxy snigger. "' _She's such a pain! She thinks she's better than us, just because she's a Slytherin. Honestly, what kind of Weasley gets put in Slytherin? That's the house of snakes!'_ Tilly stopped complaining so much about Slytherins after I got sorted, but she doesn't like you very much. Or, at all, really."

"Well, the same goes for her." Alice and Roxy smiled at each other, connected in their mutual dislike of Matilda Longbottom. "Your sister always drove me crazy at Hogwarts. Sometimes, I almost felt like she had made it her life's mission to antagonize me and my friends."

"She's the exact same way at home, always bothering me and Hannah. Tilly is always telling Hannah to watch out this September, because we can't afford another Longbottom in Slytherin. It makes Hannah cry, of course, because the poor girl is very sensitive, but I always want to punch her afterwards. She's making fun of my house! She's making fun of me!"

Roxy made noises of sympathy while the girl continued to rant about everything that her older sister did to drive Alice crazy. It sounded like Matilda was just as much the annoyance at home to her siblings that she had been to Roxy at Hogwarts.

"So what's your sister even doing with herself anymore?" asked Roxy casually, hoping Alice would tell her that Matilda was just another tragic story of the once successful student who now lived at home and did nothing with her life. It would be nice to hear that the great Matilda Longbottom was just as much of a failure as Roxy felt herself to be.

"Oh, well, Tilly works in the Department of Magical Cooperation. I don't really know what she _does_ there—she acts like it's all very mysterious when I'm sure that all it is really is just sorting out goblin debates—but I think they hired her almost straight out of Hogwarts. People were begging, really, for her to work for them, since she was, y'know, top of her class and everything." Alice shrugged, like it didn't really mean anything to her one way or another. "The good thing is that she's moving out in a few weeks, so I won't have to deal with her excessive bragging."

But Roxy felt something burn inside of her. Matilda Longbottom was already working at the Ministry; so was Jo and Kieran. Her cousins were all busy being successful in their own careers, and now all of her friends—and her worst enemy—were following the same path to a happy life.

She knew why they were already employed and succeeding. Everyone else had something driving them, everyone else had purpose. But Roxy was just _stalling_ , sitting around and letting herself become more and more paranoid by non-existent delusions. If she could only find that same sense of purpose like everyone else, maybe things would go back to normal. If she could only find something to push her—but that was it!

 _She had something already._

Roxy pulled out the letter she had been carrying for weeks and nodded to herself. She needed a quill—after all, she finally had something to write.


	10. Letters to the (editor)

"Now, I'm not necessarily _saying_ that they're going to approach you because Henrik's is notoriously picky—as well as unreliable in consistent hiring numbers. I was the only one they picked out of my class, but the year after that, they brought on eleven new kids. And even if they don't select you, that shouldn't say anything about your skills, do you understand, Roxy?" Professor Vice smiled at the small girl.

Roxanne—or Roxy, as she insisted on being called—Weasley, was amongst his favourite students since he had begun working at Hogwarts. He had been hired on as the Potions professor fourteen years ago after Professor Slughorn had finally passed away in his sleep.

(Poor man, at one hundred and four years old, he had struggled to move anywhere or do anything, and house-elves had been needed to bring him meals and assist him to bed each night.)

Professor Vice thought that students like Roxy Weasley were the reason why he taught at all. She was very friendly—something that had initially caught him off-guard, since Roxy was a Slytherin, though he had later reminded himself that it was rude to be so prejudiced, and quickly found that, Slytherin or no, Roxy was one of the hardest workers in any of his classes.

The little girl—and it was hard to think of the eighteen year old as anything but a little girl, for the she was terribly short and small—beamed up at her professor. "What are my chances, though? Of getting accepted? Do I have a good shot?"

Professor Vice nodded. A kind man though he was, he had never led a student astray. He knew when someone had a talent for potions, and when they did not. Luckily, Roxy was one of those lucky few who managed to make the ingredients practically sing their secrets to her.

"You, of all my students, are the most likely candidate. They _need_ people like you at Henrik's. Smart, creative, inventive. You're always adding on to my lessons, butting in to tell me how to _improve_ a potions. Why, Roxy, you are a natural at potions! I'd be very surprised if, by the end of graduation, they aren't knocking down your door to get you to sign up."

He had expected her to look happy, or pleased at his praise, but instead, Roxy only nodded listlessly, as though she had expected to hear nothing less. However, she didn't seem interested in what he was saying, too busy twisting her neck to look at the wall. Roxy seemed almost…put out? Yes, she seemed upset, practically annoyed, by his pronouncement.

"Is something wrong Roxy?" he asked, making sure to emphasise that he was concerned. He knew that the girl had issues believing that anyone cared about her—the two, teacher and student, had grown to have a bond of trust and respect for each other, but even still, Roxy would sometimes look up at him, and it was obvious that his words of encouragement fell flat to her ears.

"No, I'm fine," muttered Roxy, still looking away. "I just…" The girl let out a small sigh. "I think everyone expects me to go out and do something great with my life, just because I'm a Weasley. Because I'm George Weasley's daughter, and Angelina Johnson's daughter, and Freddie Weasley's sister. Like, everything I ever achieve won't be because of _me_ , it'll be because of _them_. And I don't want to get a job based off of anything less than my own merit, you know?"

"Oh, Roxy." He wanted to hug her, to console her and insist that everything would be alright. "Trust me, if they invite you onto the team, it won't be because of who you are related to. It's purely based off talent and skill. It's because _you_ have shown promise and potential, and because _you_ are great at potions. They couldn't care less about your family—your last name means nothing about whether or not they pick you. Please don't be discouraged."

"I'll try," Roxy replied, but her face was glum, and her words empty. As she left the Potions dungeon for the last time, Professor Vice couldn't help but wonder if Roxy would end up falling apart. After all, she had spent so long bottling up everything inside of her.

It would all have to come out soon enough.

* * *

30 June, 2028

Henrik's Potions and Cures Company

Dear Miss Weasley,

Congratulations!

We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for our 2028-2029 internship program. As one of the top in Potions across your year at Hogwarts (2027-2028), we would like to offer you a very prestigious position at our company, beginning with an internship that, if you prove yourself to be a dedicated and hard worker, will grow into a full-fledged position at The Henrik's Potions Co. We here at Henrik's select only the top candidates from each graduating class, not only at Hogwarts, but from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang as well. Occasionally, we are also able to find great talent across the seas, amongst our American brethren, but for the most part, our candidates and employees are culled from the best of the best right here in the United Kingdom. You have been selected due to your grades across all seven years at Hogwarts, as well as your excellent scores on both the O.W.L.S. and N.E.W.T.S. It is both an honour and a privilege to be selected, and even those who find themselves unable to complete the internship program in full will find themselves in highly successful careers due to their connections our company.

An internship at Henrik's is a year to year selection; internships can be taken away at any time should you be found to not be a proper fit for our company. This includes a high-profile arrest or regularly ending up in the tabloids for reasons that might portray our company and employees at our company in a bad light. Your agreement to work with us is also an agreement to be a model citizen in both the wizarding _and_ muggle worlds. Our employees are upstanding and the epitome of perfection. You, too, must live up to this standard, should you agree to join us here at Henrik's on the first of September.

Applicants _must_ return this letter, regardless of whether or not they intend on continuing with the program, or even beginning it at all. This is merely so we can keep track of who we have approached over the years with these offers, and to be able to keep an eye on their progress in any other fields they may choose to forge their path in. Whether you choose to begin a new life here at Henrik's, or decide that we are simply not the right fit for you, we _implore_ that you return this letter with your choice, no matter which one it might be.

Remember that Henrik's will never badger or bother potential interns to join the company. We merely offer incentives and attempt to cultivate an interest in your future here at the company. Having had a long and very proud history of producing some of the wizarding world's finest and most talented potioneers—as well as being number one in the creation and mass-production of new potions every year—we know that each person who is approached is of the highest calibre.

However, we also understand that this does not necessarily mean that each potential intern is of the right qualification to complete the program in its entirety. Three years of hard, and ever-increasing work, leads to a high drop-out rate, and the demand for excellence and a fact-based break-through on a regular basis also lead to many whom choose to seek employment elsewhere. We respect that decision, and should you come to it while under our guidance, Henrik's will do their best to ensure that the proper compensation and skills needed for your new job is available at the time of your departure.

The first date of employment for new employees and interns is, and has always been, the first of September, in remembrance of the beginning of a new year at Hogwarts. We find that beginning on this day more than any other helps new members of Henrik's feel more at home, and to more easily begin their careers here, feeling it to be a new step on their path to success.

As a first-year intern, you will be expected to not only assist full-time employees, but also any intern who currently outranks you. Unfortunately, you are beginning at the bottom of the ladder but think of it not as a long way to climb, but rather as the first rung to a lifetime of success and prosperity. If you work hard and stay dedicated, you will soon find yourself at the very top.

Your position will require you to retch supplies from our store room, as well as track down rare ingredients and prepare them for use. You will also be asked to dispose of any unused or unwanted materials in the proper manner; if a potioneer requests your presence to help test a potion, you _must_ assist, and if the potion is deemed to be harmful, you will be immediately escorted to our Hospital Wing, and proper compensation shall be rewarded.

A first-year intern is paid by the hour—10 Galleons an hour, for 8-10 hours, 6 days a week. Sundays are _your_ personal day, but remember that it is not an excuse to party or get into any trouble! Interns may be called in on Sundays to assist in certain projects, and will be paid 15 Galleons for each hour they are there. This salary will increase with each year that you work with us, and full-time employees receive an hourly wage, _along_ with bonuses for each potion that is successfully brought to market.

Thank you for considering Henrik's Potions and Cures Company for your potential future employment. Remember that applicants are due no later than the first of August and that all accepted internships will begin on the first of September. Absolutely _zero_ late acceptances are tolerated, and any offerings of internships will be revoked until the following year (that is, the year of 2029) and must be re-earned by the applicant themselves.

We hope to hear from you soon,

Adalbert Finnerty

Head of the Internship Application Program 2009-present; Head Potioneer 1995-2009; 1st in Potions at Hogwarts during the class of 1990; 4th in the class of 1990.

* * *

"Have you decided what you're going to do yet? About Henrik's, I mean? Isn't the deadline in, like, two weeks or something?" Jo took a sip from her drink, eyeing Roxy.

Jo had been enjoying her fairly easy-going job managing the Floo network, and though this meant their meetings had dwindled considerably, the two friends still made an effort to hang out whenever they could.

Though Roxy didn't much appreciate that many of their conversations had turned to discussion her future plans; it was too much like being at home nowadays, where her mum was always wheedling Roxy to make a decision before time ran out.

"I'll get to it eventually," Roxy replied with a much put-upon sigh. She really _was_ tired of hearing how great Henrik's would be for her. Honestly, Roxy was just in general growing tired of hearing everyone around her insisting that they knew what was best for her. "I just need some time to think about what I want in life. I mean what if I say yes and this job ends up being horrible and highly demanding and I hate every single person that works there?"

"What if it's amazing and opens up so many opportunities for you in the future and you end up making a bunch of new friends while you're interning there?" Jo raised an eyebrow at her. "You never know until you try it. And you've only got two weeks to make up your mind."

"Ugh," Roxy groaned. "You sound like Mum and Aunt Hermione. They're always getting after me about how much I could benefit from this and how little time I have left. It's like nobody wants me to have even a chance to slow down and think about what I want. I mean, we've only been out of school for—for not even a month! And you've got a job, Kieran has a job, _hell_ , I think practically everyone from our year has already found something to do for the next fifty years except me. I just…I just want to be allowed to be eighteen for a little while longer. I don't want to rush head-long into something new that I barely understand. Is that really too much to ask for?"

"I guess this is just what adulthood _is_ , Rox. Rushing into things, making decisions that might seem smart at the time, but turn out to be terrible ideas ten years down the road. And besides, it's just an internship—just a year of your life. If you don't like it, then you can move onto something new, something that interests you more. Nobody is asking you to sign your entire life away just yet."

Roxy crossed her arms, scowling. "That's certainly what it _feels_ like I'm being asked to do." She just wanted an opportunity to sit down for a few days and decide what it even was that _interested_ her. Sure, she was good at potions, and everyone said she would be excellent in a field that utilised her talents, but just because everyone said she should do something didn't mean she _had_ to, right?

 _Everyone said you'd be in Gryffindor, and look where you are now._

There was a tapping from the window, and both girls turned to look at a small owl sitting outside, clutching a letter in its beak as it glared balefully at them to be let inside.

"How much do you want to bet that's somebody _else_ who wants to talk me into writing to Henrik's and say yes?" Roxy asked, getting up to let the owl inside. The little bird dropped his letter on the kitchen table and—without even waiting—departed once more.

It was addressed from _Henrik's Potions and Cures Company_.

Roxy groaned once again.

* * *

15 July, 2028

Henrik's Potion and Cures Company

Dear Miss Weasley,

We could not help but notice that all attempts to connect to you since your graduation from Hogwarts have gone unnoticed. We understand entirely if you have no desire to join our internship program, or our company at all, but the instructions of our previous letter very clearly state that all applicants must either reject the offer via letter or in person. We here at Henrik's do not take silence as a definite "no", as company policy states that "no is not, nor has ever been, a word in the vocabulary of a Henrik's employee", especially when it comes to recruiting. We hope this does not seem overly forceful or pushy, but you _have_ been reminded that a definite "yes" or "not this year" must be given to our company by the first of August. You have two weeks to respond, or else any potential employment to our company will be revoked entirely, without any chance of recruitment at a later point.

We hope to hear from you soon,

Adalbert Finnerty

Head of the Internship Application Program 2009-present; Head Potioneer 1995-2009; 1st in Potions at Hogwarts during the class of 1990; 4th in the class of 1990.

* * *

"Hey Mum?" Roxy called as she headed past the kitchen and towards her bedroom. "Do you have any spare parchment?"

"In the desk drawer, as always. Why?"

"I need to write a letter to someone. A letter I probably should have written a while ago, honestly, but you always told me it was better to something late than to never do it at all, right Mum?"

"Roxanne?" Her mum gave Roxy a questioning look. "Are you writing to who I think you are?"

"That was very a grammatically confusing question." Roxy grinned. "But if you're assumption is that I'm accepting Henrik's internship offer, then yeah, I'm writing to them."

Mum clapped her hands together excitedly, a large smile stretching her features. "Oh, Roxanne! I'm glad to see you're finally choosing to do something great with your life!"

The eighteen year old rolled her eyes, but nodded, willing to let her mum coo over her for a minute if it meant she would be left alone about getting out of the house more often or "doing something with her life".

"I'm so proud of you Roxanne! Do you know, Professor Vice used to write to me sometimes to mention how great you were at Potions? He said you were a real 'natural talent', and that he wouldn't be surprised to see you working at Henrik's in a few short years. I suppose he was right." Mum continued to beam, happily rushing over the desk and grabbing a piece of parchment for Roxy. "You know, he's _so_ much better than my Potions professor."

"Professor Slughorn?"

"Hm?" Mum laughed. "Oh no, he was before my time—and after it, as well, I suppose! No, no, I had Professor Snape. He was absolutely dreadful. I barely learned a thing from him, because he spent most of his time scowling at everyone and taking off points from Gryffindor for the smallest of things. Honestly, he was quite ridiculous. We used to think he was part bat because he'd stomp around the castle in big, black robes all the time!"

"I'm glad Professor Vice isn't like that, then," said Roxy, imagining the friendly Potions professor even _trying_ to scowl at a student. He was very kind and helpful, which was understandable, as he had been a Hufflepuff during his time at Hogwarts.

Mum nodded, her eyes still bright with happiness. "Yes. Well, you ought to get on with writing that letter before time runs out. After all, they _are_ due tomorrow, aren't they? I'd recommend beginning with an apology for your exceptionally late response."

"Yes Mum," muttered Roxy before heading into her bedroom to begin the letter.

* * *

31 July, 2028

Dear Mr Finnerty,

Apologies for how late this letter has been sent! I have been considering an internship with your company all summer, and I suppose time simply got away from me. You know how busy the life of a recently graduated student can be! But I am responding now—last minute, yes, and I am very sorry for that—and I hope that it is not too late to still submit my acceptance letter.

I hope that you can understand that I have put the most consideration and thought into this decision as I possibly could before I was able to respond. After all, this is a life-changing decision, and such things are not made lightly. All of the factors had to be thought over many times before I was able to determine the most fruitful path for myself. Luckily, I have come to the conclusion that Henrik's is _definitely_ the best place for me to be able to succeed. I have always enjoyed making potions, and have been told that I have the potential to have a bright career in doing such, and I know that Henrik's is the _top_ place to make such a career out of my skill.

Again, I am terribly sorry for being so late with my response, but I can only beg that your company look back such a delay on my part and continue to consider me and my eligibility to join your internship program this September. If I am allowed to stay, I greatly look forward to working with Henrik's for many years to come, and I hope that your company will find my joining to be a positive experience.

Thank you very much for considering me and I hope to see you in September,

Roxanne Weasley

* * *

Roxy sighed, pushing the parchment away, and called for her owl. The only thing left to do now was hope that they would still be willing to take her.

And also to figure out if Lucy's insane claims about ghosts coming back from wherever they had all disappeared to could possibly have any tangible credibility.

 _Why can't I just have an easy, normal life?_ Roxy groaned before sending the owl off with her letter. She watched it fly out the window, soaring away until it was just a dot in the distance, and let her head drop into her hands. She was exhausted, having spent the remainder of her uncle's party carefully considering what she wanted.

 _This_ is _the right decision, right? You aren't going to wake up a year from now, or ten years from now, and realise that you've made a terrible decision?_ She shook her head. No, this _had_ to be the best outcome for her.

Roxy groaned again, stretched, and made her way across the room.

 _Here's hoping I don't wake up in the wrong room again,_ she thought to herself, dropping onto her bed and falling asleep almost seconds after her head hit the pillow.


	11. If I am to be my brother's keeper

" _August 4, 2028_

 _The Daily Prophet_

 _Does the Weasley-Potter Family Not Know the Truth About Their Children? Or Do They Just Not Care?_

 _By Cara Kinsington_

Is it possible that Head Auror Harry Potter is willingly turning a blind eye to the actions of his daughter, twenty-year-old Lily Potter, and youngest niece, eighteen-year-old Roxanne 'Roxy' Weasley? Or is Auror Potter _honestly_ blind when it comes to these two wild young girls? Spotted attending not just a few—but so _many_ that some sources are suggesting that this is not just a means of recreation, but a serious addiction—of the notorious Mia Ittermann parties (pictures on page 4), Lily Potter and Roxy Weasley are found drinking, partying, and even leaving with _unknown male attendees_.

Lily Potter, a known offender of the "can't and won't ever be tied down club", is notorious for stringing along boys who are often several years older than she, dating them for "up to ninety days at a time before dumping them for someone more interesting", according to Miss Potter herself. Her current flavour of the month appears to be Tolkien Smith—who, at a mere eleven months older than Miss Potter, is her youngest suitor to date—though it is unknown if Mister Smith is aware that his fiery girlfriend is apparently seeing other men behind his back.

The two have been dating since early June, as my dedicated readers will know, and as it is now August, the expiration date of their relationship is beginning to draw near. But who knows! Perhaps this one will finally be the one to make an honest woman out of Miss Potter? More likely, though, is that Lily Potter will dump him soon and move on to one of her numerous boy toys that she has been seen with.

Rumours continue to circulate that it is _due_ to Lily Potter's inability to stay monogamous—and committed—has led to several nasty break-ups in the past.

It may come to a surprise to many readers to see the young girls—the children of war idols and heroes—throwing themselves into drinking, as, of all of their cousins, it must be said that Lily Potter and Roxy Weasley have managed to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves over the years. The biggest scandal before now involving the magnanimous Miss Weasley was her sorting into Slytherin at age eleven. For the most part, she has stayed out of the tabloids and the limelight. But that doesn't mean that her party-girl lifestyle only began recently.

Sources who know Miss Weasley well note that the girl has been seen at Miss Ittermann's parties since she was merely _fifteen_ years old, still a Hogwarts' student. Miss Potter, a latecomer, has only been hanging around at these events since earlier this year, but her cousin's wild partying since such a young age might stand as a concern to the lack of supervision over these still impressionable girls. After all, Miss Weasley's mother, Angelina, has always been absent throughout Roxy's childhood, too busy chasing after national and international titles for her Quidditch team.

Is it possible that poor Miss Weasley had only thrown herself into this wild lifestyle to get away from the problems of her rather troubled adolescence? Long-time readers—and fans of the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes—will remember Mr George Weasley's death a mere four years ago, brought on by grief following his son's accident a year previously, when the nineteen year old Frederick "Freddie" Weasley was trying out for a Beater's position for Puddlemere United. The boy was unseated during the try-out and fell to his death.

Miss Weasley, only thirteen at the time of her brother's death, would of course been distraught, and even more so when she lost her father shortly after. This is a very probable cause for why she has thrown herself amongst such a wild and dangerous group of young people—and why it is so dangerous that Miss Weasley's lifestyle has attracted Lily Potter's attention as well.

I strongly and sincerely urge Mrs Angelina Weasley and Mr and Mrs Potter to keep a closer eye on their daughters before someone is too severely hurt by these dangerously provocative activities. Though they may not want to admit to being too lenient with their children, it is in the girls' best interest—and in the best interest of the girls who look up to this famous family—to be stopped before things get any worse than they already are.

This is Cara Kinsingston, third-generation legacy Daily Prophet reporter, wishing you a pleasant week."

* * *

Bitch." Lily crumpled up and tossed the newspaper into a nearby bin, scowling. "Fucking _bitch_. Fucking lying bitch!"

"She's not entirely lying," said Roxy somewhat lazily, making her hairpin float up and down as she considered Cara Kingston's article. "I mean, sure some of the facts are a bit stretched and she's sort've reaching for that whole 'me getting into partying because I couldn't handle Freddie's death' thing, but when you consider that she's niece of Rita Skeeter, you've got to admit she at least is trying to be as honest as she can."

"How can you defend her?" Lily shrieked. The older girl jumped to her feet, pacing back and forth, grumbling under her breath with a determined expression on her face, looking ready to murder the next person who said anything even remotely positive about Cara Kingston.

Lily had burst into the Burrow not even twenty minutes ago, screaming for Roxy to come downstairs _now_. Roxy, awoken from what had been a pretty lovely sleep, had been reluctant but gave in after Lily started threatening to hex Roxy. She found her normally fairly calm cousin punching the breakfast table and shooting dirty looks at that morning's copy of _The Daily Prophet_.

"Mum'll have read this by now, I'm sure of it! And even if she hasn't, by _some_ miracle, she'll know soon enough! I mean, the bloody woman works at this bloody newspaper with all those other bloody gits who like to write about our bloody family and—"

Roxy held up her hands in a sign of defence, noticing that Lily's skin was now nearly as red as her hair, the girl was so enraged. "Lils." Her cousin whirled around, staring Roxy down. "Hey, it's _okay_. If Aunt Ginny or anyone else asks, we can just tell them that this is _The Prophet_ being their usual obsessive selves, making up trashy stories about us to make an extra Galleon or two."

Lily ran her fingers through her hair, sighing heavily. "You don't understand, Rox. They have _pictures_ of us. Goddamn _pictures_ of us. Drinking, partying, and dancing. Hell, they've even got one from a few months ago of me and Simon, when I was dating _that_ tosser! And photos don't lie."

"Well, they could've been faked or—"

"THEY WEREN'T FAKED, ROXANNE WEASLEY! MY MOTHER IS GOING TO KILL ME NOW, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?! SHE'S LITERALLY GOING TO KILL ME!"

Roxy stared, open-mouthed, at Lily. She had never seen the other girl so riled up before—but then again, Lily _had_ been pretty good at hiding everything she ever did wrong from her parents. They had always considered her to be a pretty good girl—maybe with poor choice in boys, but one who tried her hardest and rarely ever got into trouble, as far as the media could tell.

Lily certainly wasn't innocent, but she had been almost perfect at hiding her mistakes from adults until now. Aunt Ginny probably _would_ flip the second she caught a glimpse of those photographs of Lily and Roxy.

Not to mention how _Mum_ would react. This would go beyond any bad test score or detention from Hogwarts. Depending on how many pictures could be dredged up, Mum would find out that Cara Kingston's claims of just how far back Roxy's indulgences went were true. Her mother would be more than just disappointed—she'd be furious, possibly enough to kick Roxy out of the flat for good, or to even disown her.

Roxy let her head drop into her hands, wondering what the hell they were supposed to do now. Certainly, there would be lectures. Lectures about irresponsibility, lectures about upholding the family name, lectures about treating herself with respect, and lectures about how this would _never_ have happened with Freddie.

Because it always came back to that, didn't it? No matter what she did—good or bad—it would always be compared to the actions of her dead brother.

"Roxy, do you realise what this means for me, though?" Lily's voice broke through Roxy's thoughts, making her look up once more at her cousin. "I mean, I _work_ in the news business. I take photographs professionally of—of _other_ people screwing their lives up. And now…and now, it's _me_. I'm the one who fucked up. _I'm_ the one who's been caught and humiliated in front of the whole wizarding world. I might be ruined for—forever."

"I'm sure Aunt Luna won't fire you just because you've been painted as a wild partier with a drinking problem and a tendency to sleep around," Roxy replied, trying to keep her voice light and airy while fighting down her own panic. She was still in the process of applying to Henrik's Potions—what if they turned her down now because of this?

"Oh, crap! Tolkien is _totally_ going to believe all this bullshit, isn't he? He's gonna—he's gonna break-up with me!" Lily's shoulders began to tremble. She covered her face with her hands as she choked back tears. "Rox, I was starting to think he might be the _one_. I mean, Tolkien loves me and cares for me and he's—he's _honest_! And he's so much more interesting than all the other boys and now, because of that—that _bitch_! Ooh," she moaned. "He's going to dump me, I just know it. My life is ruined!"

Roxy said nothing, mostly because she didn't think she would have been able to keep from saying the truth—that she thought Tolkien Smith was a bad choice for Lily anyway, and that they weren't going to make it as a couple much longer anyway. Instead, she moved to wrap her arms around her cousin, rubbing Lily's back as the other girl wracked with sobbed.

"I don't understand how we were even caught Rox. I mean, _I_ never saw anyone with cameras at those stupid partied, did you?" Roxy shook her head, though to be honest, she rarely remembered _anything_ from Mia's parties. "At—at least she didn't say anything about the party here, at the Burrow. Grandmum Weasley would be furious to hear we trashed her house." Lily looked around the kitchen at the spotless counters and scrubbed floors, all courtesy of Roxy's hard work.

Just then, there was a tap on the window that made both girls shriek. When Roxy opened it to find her mother's owl—Whitmore, a surly old thing—her heart nearly leapt out of her chest. The bird was holding a scrap of parchment, and she didn't even need to take it from Whitmore to read the message that was scrawled out in her mother's handwriting.

 _I need to see you. Now._

"Does she know?" Lily asked frantically, ripping the note from Whitmore, who hooted angrily at the girls before taking flight once more. "Is she going to kill us? She's going to tell my mum, probably. Unless Aunt Ange already _has_ told her! Oh shit, what if _I_ get a letter as well?"

"Iunno." Roxy shrugged, heart still threatening to run away from her. "But it's probably best if I do go immediately before Mum starts to get mad. I don't want to irritate her any more than is necessary."

"Good idea," said Lily, looking ready to faint. "Avoidance probably isn't the answer…for—for you, I mean. It's the _perfect_ solution for me, though…"

"Right. I'll be back."

"Mm." Lily went to dunk her head in the kitchen sink as Roxy headed out of the Burrow to deal with her mother.

* * *

When Roxy slipped through the front door of the flat, letting it click shut behind her, she almost hoped that her mum was out somewhere, perhaps with friends, so that Roxy would have time to come up with a good explanation for everything. Instead, she heard her mother call from out from the kitchen, "Roxanne? Is that you? Roxy? Roxy?"

Roxy stood in the doorway, shocked. Her mother _never_ called her Roxy anymore. _Not for five years, she hasn't, anyway._ "Yeah, Mum, it's me," Roxy called back, fingers crossed that her mother hadn't seen that morning's newspaper. "I just wanted to check in on you—to, uh, see how you were doing today."

Her mum was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee and fiddling with a piece of burnt toast. That morning's copy of _The Daily Prophet_ was resting on the table, and Roxy gulped, ready for the worst. At any second, her mum was going to blow up and demand to know just _what_ Roxy thought she had been doing all this time, and then they would get into a screaming match and—

But Mum didn't seem mad. If anything, she seemed despondent. Frown stretching her lips, hands shaking, her brow pulled tight as she looked up at Roxy standing in the doorway of the kitchen. There were wet streaks on her mum's cheeks; had Mum been crying all morning?

 _Shit_. This was not at all the reaction Roxy had been expecting from her mother; anger she could process. Frustration, disappointment, fury—sure, those were reasonable reactions to finding out your daughter was plastered across the morning papers. But _crying_?

"Mum? Are you okay?" And then she wanted to slap herself. How had she forgotten? Today would have been Freddie's birthday. It was entirely possible _this_ was why she had been called over because her mother was mourning and wanted her daughter around to keep her company.

Roxy sat down at the table, reaching out to grab her mum's hand, but the older woman only shook her head, carefully picking up her coffee with trembling hands and taking a small sip. Roxy watched as her mum took a deep breath as if steeling herself to say something particularly difficult and painful. Roxy's heart jumped—nothing had happened, had it? Not _today_ , for the love of Merlin, not to anyone she cared about!

"Look at this," Mum said, looking close to tears. She shoved the 'Popular Interest' section of _The Daily Prophet_ across the table. Roxy recalled seeing her family's name written in this—and many other—sections many times over the years. After all, the Weasleys were _The Prophet's_ favourite family to write about, with so many war heroes to drag through the mud whenever they got the chance to do so. "Look what they wrote about us today. _Today_! Of all days!"

" _August 4, 2028_

 _The Daily Prophet_

 _Girlfriend Still Mourning 5 Years After Freddie Weasley's Death; Says 'I don't feel like I'm a part of the Weasley family at all!'_

 _By Edda Willoughby_

Frederick 'Freddie' Weasley would have been twenty-five today, save for an unfortunate Quidditch accident five years ago, when the then nineteen-year-old was trying out for a position as Beater on Puddlemere United's 2023-2024 season.

Weasley, who had been dating Emily Maccabee since their sixth and fifth years respectively, had been unaware of his girlfriend's condition at the time of his death; specifically, the fact that Maccabee was nearly three months pregnant.

"I only realised it a few days before myself," confesses Maccabee, a sweet twenty-four year old who currently works at Flourish and Blott's, the well-known bookstore in Diagon Alley. "I hadn't found the courage to tell Freddie yet—to be honest, I hadn't told _anyone_ yet. I was too scared! I found myself wishing this was all a big mistake or something, that I was imagining being pregnant, especially _after_ the accident."

Emily Maccabee, the daughter of Paige Wood (who is the younger sister of famed Quidditch star, Oliver Wood) and Walter Maccabee, explains that she and Weasley had "no intention of becoming parents at such a young age." In fact, Maccabee says, "My mother had me at nineteen years old. My parents married young and had warned me of the dangers of having kids before I was ready. And Freddie and I? We just weren't ready."

Despite her hesitation to start a family—and despite Mr Weasley's untimely death—Maccabee bravely had her daughter, named Faith Mackayla Maccabee, on the 4th of January, 2024. At the time of her birth, Freddie Weasley's family was not even aware that Emily Maccabee had ever even been pregnant.

"I didn't want to tell them. I didn't want to burden them with the responsibility of having to know that their son had left behind a daughter that he would never meet."

Little Faith, who looks remarkably like her father, with the same dark hair and cinnamon-tinted, is a four-year-old beauty, as well as the love of Emily's life. Yet, Maccabee admits, Faith has only met her paternal grandmother less than a dozen times. Her aunt Roxanne? Only once, when Roxanne graduated in June.

"We aren't a part of their family. We aren't involved in the big Weasley family. And I think part of that is connected to the fact that we've all sort of been mourning at our own pace. I can understand that it would be hard, even after five years, to see Freddie in my daughter, and that has to be hard on Mrs Weasley."

When asked if she intended on helping her little girl connect to what family she has left, Maccabee said only this, "I'm not sure that's the best option for Faith, or even myself. I've been trying to move on, and I want to live a normal life with my daughter. She shouldn't be pushed into visiting people to whom she has no understanding of. So for now, we're keeping our distance from the Weasleys, until something can be figured out."

But why doesn't Angelina Weasley reach out to the girl who could have been her daughter-in-law? Why doesn't she reach out to her young granddaughter? As we take this day to mourn a man who will not be able to celebrate turning twenty-five, the question remains: why do the Weasleys exclude their only remaining connection to Freddie Weasley?

 _Edda Willoughby is the junior editor of the 'Popular Interest' Department at The Daily Prophet._ "

Roxy read through the article a second and third time, trying to wrap her mind around it all. Emily had talked to _The Prophet_ about her family—about Freddie. She had practically accused Roxy and Mum of not caring about Faith at all like they had no interest in the little girl.

Perhaps all of this had been made up by the newspaper, who had not been recalled as the most credible of sources in the past twenty years; or perhaps Emily needed money, and she felt that giving the public what they wanted—a drama-filled story about everyone's favourite wizarding family—would help to pay a few bills for the months.

Whatever the reason, Emily had _lied_ about Roxy's family, saying they didn't care about Faith at all, that they had turned Emily away. Hadn't Mum attempted to visit Emily after Faith's birth and been told by Mrs Maccabee that she wasn't wanted? Hadn't they sent Faith a Christmas and birthday present every single year? Hadn't they offered to fund little Faith when she was finally old enough to go to Hogwarts?

But _The Prophet_ made Roxy's mother out to be the bad guy, the bitter grandmother who wanted nothing to do with her dead son's girlfriend, which simply wasn't true. It had been Roxy who hesitated to be near Emily for the past five years, but Mum had done everything she could to make sure Emily and Faith were properly taken care of.

"Why would they say stuff like this about you?" she asked Mum, raising an eyebrow, though the rest of her remained still. If there was one thing that being in Slytherin taught you, it was how to appear calm even when you were furious. Emotions could give others' an upper hand, but if you _looked_ like you weren't bothered, their advantage would be gone.

"Who? _The Prophet_ , or Emily?"

"Both. But…especially Emily. Why—why would she say that you didn't care about her at all? Why would she make up all this stuff about staying out of each other's lives?"

"I don't know." Her mum sighed, letting her chin rest in her palms. "I wish I understood what Emily was thinking. But she's been so different lately—did you know, I was going to take Faith for the weekend so she could meet Remus. They're of an age, after all, and cousins, so I thought it would be good for them both…" She let out a bitter laugh, shrugging. "And now Emily has cancelled this weekend and instead interviews with _The Prophet_ to speak out against me on my son's birthday as if it were not already hard enough for me to get through this day."

Roxy nodded, fingers curling around the edges of the paper. She wanted to hit someone—Emily, this stupid reporter—in the face and scream as loud as she could so everyone knew how unfair it all was, that people thought it was okay to write such awful things about her family—about her _mother_ —and think nothing of it because the Weasleys were _famous, bloody war heroes_!

It wasn't fair!

"By the way, Roxanne," her mum said as Roxy scanned the article once more, chest thumping with fury at the slander against her mother. "Ginny owled me this morning about _The Prophet_ article concerning you and Lily. I just want you to know that we _will_ be having a discussion about your behaviour later on." Mum smiled weakly at Roxy and shut the door.


	12. Stronger than you (think)

Roxy woke with a groan, glaring at the blaring noise coming from her alarm clock.

Or rather, her brother's alarm clock because, once again, the teen found herself waking on the floor of Freddie's old bedroom, squinting at the lightly shaking clock that looked like it came right out of an old cartoon, with two large gold bells that clattered noisily against the plastic circular frame of the clock.

This was possibly even more strange than finding herself in Freddie's bedroom—to be honest, the situation was becoming so common that she half-expected it every time she woke up, despite not finding a suitable explanation for _why_ it was happening. But the alarm clock in Freddie's room had been broken for years; even before his death, her brother had tossed the alarm clock across the room in a bout of teenage frustration and had never gotten around to fixing it.

All of this meant that the alarm clock shouldn't have been going off, and certainly not at six in the bloody morning, which was when _Roxy_ needed to wake for work but was much too early to have ever been set to go off for Freddie, a late riser his whole life.

 _Why me? Why here?_ Roxy couldn't figure out what was constantly dragging her to her older brother's room night after night. This had never happened before she came home after graduation, and since her return from the Burrow, her nightly wanderings to Freddie's bedroom only seemed to increase, but for the life of her, she had no clue _why_ she kept waking up in here instead of where she had fallen asleep—torn away from her comfortable bed.

"Roxanne?" she heard her mother call. "It's six, time to get up for work. Are you planning on taking a shower today? I—" There was the sound of footsteps down the hallway, then silence, as Mum paused. "I could make breakfast."

"I'm fine Mum. Just let me get ready and I'll probably grab some toast on my way out. You can go back to bed." Roxy listened for the sounds of her mother's footsteps walking away and let out a sigh. Her mum didn't know that Roxy had been waking up several times each week in her brother's room, and Roxy didn't feel like dealing with how her mum might interpret such a behaviour.

When Roxy was certain her mum was gone, she let out a groan, pulling herself from the floor. Roxy wished she didn't have to work today, that she didn't have to Apparate to the atrium of Henrik's Potions—today or any other day.

She had been working for a grand total of two weeks, another clueless intern working for Henrik's Potions, which had—at least so far—consisted of running around the supply room to grab various ingredients for the older, more experienced potioneers to use.

There were sixteen interns at the company right now, four, including herself, who were straight out of school. Roxy made sure to check out the others, in case she recognised any fellow Slytherins, but everyone else who had been hired were Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws, or Gryffindors. As far as Roxy could find, she was the only Slytherin that had been hired in the past six years.

Rose told her to give it time, that if she worked hard and showed herself to be a loyal and trustworthy employee, Roxy would soon be rewarded. "Just ignore anyone who gives you crap about your house. Just ignore anyone who gives you crap about your last name. Be _you_ , Rox, and as long as you do that, you'll be successful."

Roxy thought it was all a load of crap. Be her best? How could she be her best when everyone sniggered and mocked her like they were still students—or worse, the older employees who were silent and distant and didn't care that Roxy was trying her hardest to prove that she was better than their expectations of her.

She had thought—foolishly, childishly—that these sorts of attitudes would cease after Hogwarts, that she would finally be surrounded by mature adults who didn't care _who_ you were or what your house had been.

And perhaps Rose was right—perhaps things _would_ get better with time. Perhaps she would one day be able to walk into work and not hear hisses from her co-workers, who thought they were funny and clever. Perhaps, with time, she would have the respect of everyone else that she deserved just as much as the other interns.

But for now, even after two weeks, she spoke to no one, took her lunch breaks alone, and was growing increasingly miserable. It wasn't that she _hated_ her job—no, working at Henrik's had given her so much insight into the world of potioneering that she had never considered before—but her co-workers were making life more difficult than she felt was appropriate.

Was it bearable? Yes. After all, she had dealt with teasing and bullying and name-calling before; Roxy was old hat to a world that seemed set against Slytherins. She was not so weak as to quit because some idiots couldn't handle the idea of receiving a Billywig's sting from a Slytherin.

But that didn't mean she was appreciated or agreeable to their behaviours. Rose, when Roxy brought up the complaint after nearly being shoved to the floor by Horace Maldonado and Michael Kelly, suggested that Roxy approach the intern supervisor—a harsh-looking woman named Starsha—but Roxy shot her down. She wasn't going to whinge to their supervisor about something as harmless as stupid meat-heads thinking they could scare her.

"I'm _fine_ , Rose," she replied when Rose again pushed her to say something. "If I can't handle some idiotic teasing, then I might as well just hide in my bed for the rest of my life. No matter where I try to find work, there's always going to be _someone_ who tries to give me a hard time just because I was in Slytherin. You don't think I'm not used to this sort of crap?"

"But that's not okay!" Rose had said indignantly, hands on her hips. Her cheeks were flaming, and her body language screamed that she was ready at Roxy's word to fight the other interns. "You shouldn't be fine with—you shouldn't be used to it! You ought to say something, or else the situation will never improve."

Roxy rolled her eyes at the memory of her cousin, stepping under the hot water of her shower. Rose was _just_ like Aunt Hermione. She found a cause to fight for in just about everything and rarely let it go until she felt the problem was properly resolved.

When she had finished getting ready, Roxy looked into the mirror one last time, wondering if _today_ would be the day that her co-workers and fellow interns would finally leave her alone to work in peace, or if she would have to continue looking over her shoulder for leering faces and smirks.

* * *

"Hey, Weasley!" one of the older interns—a tall brunet named McGregor, who was flanked by two of his usual cronies, big guys who were smart enough—you _had_ to be smart to get into Henrik's—but seemed fine with letting McGregor do the talking for them most days.

James McGregor was a senior, third-year intern—at the end of his contract, the company would decide whether or not to keep him on staff permanently. McGregor seemed to have no doubt that he would be accepted to the sounds of thunderous applause and praise.

He _also_ seemed to think it was perfectly appropriate to call every female he saw—whether they were his superior or not—a "lass", and spent most his time hitting on girls and ordering the younger interns around like he was already a full-time partner; Roxy thought he was an absolute pig and hoped that the company didn't intend on taking him on at the end of his contract. The idea of being stuck with him for several more years—and as a full potioneer, no less, with the authority to boss her around any time he felt like it—was nearly unbearable.

Roxy ignored him, continuing to rifle through a box of Bezoars. McGregor was just another puffed-up egotistical male who had a stupid grudge against her because had been a Gryffindor during his days at Hogwarts. Four years Roxy's senior, he was the oldest of the interns and was supposedly sleeping with Starsha, if the rumours were of any value.

She had become adept at blocking out McGregor and the others like him, those that wanted to push her around and see how close to the edge they could get Roxy before she snapped. Luckily, unlike at Hogwarts, Roxy had finally realised that the consequences were a bit more severe than a detention should she take out her frustration on a dolt like McGregor.

"I said, hey Weasley," McGregor called again, louder this time. His two lackeys—David Tolti and Jamison Choi—leered up at Roxy as she clattered around on the shaky ladder. McGregor looked over at his mates, smirking. "Well now, don't you think Weasley's being a bit rude? She won't even acknowledge me when I'm talking to her. How insulting. I mean, here we are, her _betters_ , and she thinks she has pride enough to ignore us?"

"Maybe she thinks she's too good for us, being a Slytherin and all. You know how those hissy little snakes are, spouting their stupid philosophies about blood superiority." Tolti smirked at Roxy, placing a hand on the ladder, making it tremble slightly.

"Or perhaps I think you're all a bunch of pompous, self-inflated arseholes who think this is still our parents' times, and that it was just Slytherins who were bad guys and Gryffindors who were good guys." She glared at Tolti, moving her shoe just over his fingers, which he quickly pulled away.

"When were there any bad Gryffindors?" McGregor asked with a sneer, making Roxy roll her eyes. The war hadn't been that long ago—there were still cells in Azkaban that housed known Death Eaters and their supporters. Was McGregor really so dull that he couldn't remember what they were taught in history class?

"Peter Pettigrew, for one, or did you never bother to pay attention in History class? And there were others—Shannon Carrey, Timothy Potts, Teresa Nomser. And good Slytherins? How about Astoria Greengrass? Andromeda Tonks? Though some might like to make the war black and white, things are not as simple as you—and others—would like to pretend it to be."

There was anger in her voice and frustration, that hearkened back to hours spent arguing with students of other houses that her house was nothing of any particular evil, only stigmatised by a few of an exceptionally dark nature who had pushed things too far.

Her hands shook as she hung off of the ladder, staring down at these boys who had been Gryffindors and Ravenclaws while at Hogwarts. These boys, who did not understand what it was like to be hissed at and teased because the Sorting Hat had placed her amongst the other snakes.

But she could not start a fight, not here at work, not when that was exactly what these idiots were expecting her to do. She had to be mature, as always. Responsible, as expected. Calm-headed, because getting into fights over a few insults was what _Gryffindors_ did. And she was no Gryffindor; no, she was a worthy Slytherin, and she knew how to keep herself safe.

The ladder trembled beneath her once again, and she turned to see McGregor pulling on it, rocking it from side to side, a smirk on his face. Because he also knew that she was no Gryffindor and that Roxy would not fight back against him, nor tell their superiors about his behaviour.

She smirked right back at him, though, not at all thrown by his taunts or threats. Because she would not hit him or speak against him—but the day would come that Roxy's revenge would be ready, and McGregor would regret ever even speaking to her. They would all regret the injuries they had made her suffer through over the years, McGregor and everyone like him who did not respect Slytherins. All that was needed was time.

And she had plenty of that. She could be patient.

"Roxy?" It was Rose in the doorway, her cousin Rose, who was a full-fledged partner with superiority over them all, and a raised eyebrow as she took in the scene of the four interns crowded around a shaky wooden ladder. "What's going on?"

Roxy shook her head, confused. What had she just been thinking? The anger that coursed through her—she could barely even remember why she felt it, as the energy seemed to drain out of her suddenly. Her grip on the ladder was loosening, and Roxy could hardly even remember where she was at that moment.

Something about McGregor, feelings of frustration against him, and thoughts that were wholly Slytherin—but darker than anything Roxy had ever felt before. Had that really been her, contemplating revenge over a few stupid comments?

"Roxy? Roxy, what's going on? You're shaking, you're—" The next thing Roxy knew, her fingers uncurled from the ladder and she was crashing to the floor, hair spilling at the feet of McGregor and the other boys. And then her world went dark.

After work, Roxy—who was tired and wished she smelled a little less like dragon's blood—Apparated to The Witch's Brew, where Jo and Lily were already waiting for her, each with their own drinks in hand, chatting aimlessly as Roxy dropped heavily into the booth with them and signalled for the closest waitress to bring her a beer.

She had decided not to tell them about the incident that had happened in the storage room with her co-workers, and the strange feelings that had overcome her suddenly. Rose might tell Aunt Hermione about it—Rose was _always_ telling Aunt Hermione about her cousins' issues, which was how it so often spread around the family—but Roxy herself would make no mention of it.

After all, she hadn't eaten breakfast this morning, nor dinner last night. Most likely, she had just been light-headed and hungry, which was why she had felt so strange before fainting. At least, that was what the matron at Henrik's suggested to her, and Roxy was more than happy to agree with her in order to get back to work faster.

She gave Jo and Lily a small wave as she scooted over slightly, letting her head rest momentarily on the table-top. The wood was cool and felt nice to her overheated skin.

"Long day?" asked Jo, hiding her smile behind a menu. "How's McGregor? Still treating you and the other 'young lasses' like you're incompetent? That's what he calls all the girls, right? Even people like Rose and such?"

"I didn't punch him, at least. That has to count for _something_ , right?" Roxy joked. "Though that's not to say he wouldn't have deserved it if I had. He's so sleazy and lazy, I don't see how he even got accepted at all."

"Ah, well, they have a quota to fill, I suppose, and they must've been short on arseholes when they decided to hire him. If you _do_ ever punch him, Roxy dear, make sure to take a picture afterwards of his face. I'd love to see how red he gets." Jo grinned, taking a sip of her drink with one hand while holding her other hand over her cheek as if she had just been hit.

Roxy and Lily laughed though Roxy noticed that Lily's laugh seemed emptier than normal like her head was full of something else. She wondered if Lily was feeling very well. The flu was beginning to go around work, and she hoped Lily wasn't coming down with it as well.

"He's a prick, alright. Him and those cronies of his. _Merlin_ , I hate the lot of them. They're all so pompous, you know? It's stupid. They like to act like we're still at Hogwarts and they're a bunch of Quidditch stars that we ought to all worship." Roxy rolled her eyes.

The waitress came by with a drink for Roxy and took the girls' orders with a smile before leaving them once more to their conversation. Jo laughingly told a story about a dull brunette from her work who couldn't seem to figure out how to properly lock a door whenever she got into the mood to sleep with one of their co-workers.

"We've walked in on her nearly half a dozen times now," Jo said, laughing loudly and taking another sip of her drink, her face animated as she spoke. Roxy chuckled and replied at all the appropriate times in response, but she couldn't help but be distracted by how quiet her cousin was.

She glanced over at Lily, who continued to take swigs from her beer, and occasionally cracked a smile, but mostly seemed distant and withdrawn from the conversation. Roxy shot Lily a look of curiosity, raising an eyebrow in question, but Lily only shrugged.

Roxy remembered when—a month ago, following the pictures of them in the newspaper—Aunt Ginny had railed at Lily for several hours which led to a screaming match between two. Lily had threatened to move out; Aunt Ginny had told her that maybe that was for the best. But in the end, Lily had gone nowhere at all, and after swearing to her mum that it would never happen again, life had gone back to normal.

(Because, of course, Lily was almost a Slytherin in her ability to manipulate people—and the parties hadn't stopped for her yet, even though Roxy, like Jo and Kieran and so many of her other friends, had become hesitant to even be seen at an Ittermann party.)

Just as Jo finished up her story, the waitress returned with their food—steaming and hot, she warned, setting the plates down in front of the three girls cheerily. "Enjoy!" she told them before heading towards another table across the bar.

Finally, Roxy could take it no more, as she watched her cousin poke at her food. Roxy set her fork down, noisily clearing her throat to get the other two girls' attention. "Lily?" she asked carefully. "Has something happened recently?"

"I've been thinking about breaking up with him," said Lily quietly, staring down at her plate. "I thought he might be, y'know, 'the one' or whatever bullshit those romantics are always going on about. But recently..." She sighed.

"He doesn't hit you or anything, right Lils?" Jo asked. All three girls remembered Jo's boyfriend from when they were fifth years, who had slapped her and punched her until Jo cursed him, sending the boy to the Hospital Wing for two weeks. Jo was not a weak girl, but she had been only fifteen—and he was her first boyfriend.

"No!" Lily's eyes widened and she shook her head emphatically. "No, no, he's never laid a hand on me." Her shoulders slumped once more, all the energy fading from her as quickly as it had come. "But I feel like all we ever do is drink and party and do drugs and smoke. I don't feel like he cares about me—and I couldn't honestly say that I care at all for him. If he died," her voice dropped even more, so that Jo and Roxy had to lean in to hear her next words. "If he died right now, and they came and told me, I don't think I'd even cry. Does that make me an awful person?"

Roxy and Jo both told her no, that didn't necessarily make her an awful person—as long as she didn't do the killing herself, Jo said with a laugh, which at least got Lily to chuckle quietly.

"Maybe that's for the best, then," Roxy said, doing her best to sound comforting. She'd began to feel the same way herself towards Kieran. They hadn't seen each other in nearly a month, and the last time she had been on a date with him had been back in early July. She could understand not wanting to continue in a relationship that felt dead.

"Yeah. If you don't love him any more, it's just as bad for you to keep with the relationship. _Worse_ , even, because all you're doing is punishing yourself for no logical reason." Jo gave Lily a comforting smile, taking a bite of her sandwich.

Sometimes, looking and speaking to Lily, Roxy could forget that _she_ was the younger of the two cousins—Lily could be immature at times, and certainly in need of guidance more than Roxy had ever felt she needed. Perhaps it was because Roxy had been forced to grow up faster, but she occasionally could swear that it was _her_ , and not Lily, that was two years out of Hogwarts, a successful and rational adult.

The conversation shifted to other matters, the three girls chatting about lighter subjects—Roxy still carefully avoiding the subject of the incident at work—until Roxy had to bow out, saying something about not wanting to stay out too late, not with work the next morning. The other two agreed, and they departed, each Apparating to their own home after giving each other friendly enough good-byes, promising to meet up again soon enough.

Roxy wandered into her bedroom, not even bothering to change her clothes, rubbing her head—where a dull throbbing had popped up out of nowhere—and hoped that sleep would come to her quickly.

She was only mildly surprised to hear, just two days later, that Lily and Tolkien had broken up; Lily called her in tears to tell her that they were _through, finished, over_. Roxy noticed that Lily, despite the tears, did not seem too terribly upset about it.


	13. Some questions have been brought up

It was her nineteenth birthday—a day that Roxy would have been more than fine with celebrating quietly by herself with a bottle of Butterbeer and some nice muggle movies, but her grandmum and mum wouldn't stand to hear of such an idea as not throwing a birthday party.

After all, Grandmum _loved_ baking cakes and cooking elaborate meals for any opportunity she could find, and Roxy didn't have the heart to tell the seventy-nine year old no. Especially after the party that had trashed the Burrow—something which Roxy had still not told anyone else about, and that she feared would be revealed in _The Daily Prophet_ any day.

After all, it only took one absent-minded comment to a reporter to create a story, and with a party such as the one from last month, there were bound to be all sorts of loose-lipped party-goers who were short on money and eager to spill a few secrets about the Weasley family to an errant reporter.

So when her mother woke Roxy early on the morning of her birthday—luckily, in her own bed for once—Roxy did her best to not complain about the hour or the obligations that came from being part of such a large and sociable family.

Instead, she thanked her mum for the wrapped present that she was presented with and did her best to smile and pretend like everything was fine, that she wouldn't rather pull the cover back over her head and sleep until she was twenty.

After quickly getting ready, Roxy wandered into the flat's kitchen, wondering if her mother also expected her to sit down and eat an awful breakfast prepared by Mum. She could handle a bunch of noisy cousins wishing her a happy birthday, but she certainly didn't wish to start off her day with burnt toast and runny eggs.

"Did you open your present yet Roxanne?" Mum asked her eagerly, directing the teen towards the table, where—unfortunately, though not particularly unexpected—a plate of poorly cooked breakfast and half-boiled tea was waiting to her. "I thought you'd want to open it now rather than later, since you'll soon have so many presents, you'll be opening them up until Christmas." Mum shook her head fondly. "I just have never been able to understand having so many people in one house at the same time. You know, it was always just my two brothers and I. Can you imagine if I had as many brothers as your father? And if they had all decided to have kids? You'd have too many cousins to know what to do with."

"Yeah, and instead, Uncle Joel and Uncle Jeremiah decided to be bachelors forever." Roxy smiled at her mum, who leaned down to kiss her daughter on the forehead. "Just like I'm going to be, since you've already got a grandchild. Certainly don't need anymore, do you? 'Cause you're not getting any from me!"

"I've always loved your wonderful attitude Roxanne. It lets me know you're really you—if someone else tries to take your place, I can just ask them a question, and if I don't get a sarcastic or snarky response in return, I know it isn't truly you." Mum ruffled Roxy's hair playfully before pointing to the plate of unappetising food sitting before her. "Now come on, eat a little something. I'm sure Molly will have plenty of food while we're there, but I'd rather you not go to the party on an entirely empty stomach."

Roxy rolled her eyes, grimaced, and took a bite of the seriously undercooked ham sandwich. She had never understood how her mum could be so blind to how truly awful her food was, but Roxy suffered through half of the sandwich anyway, while her mum smiled at her, looking pleased enough to make the terrible sandwich worth eating.

"I've always agreed with a Molly on this much, at least. You're much too thin for a girl your age, even one so small as yourself. I don't like it. I feel like you hardly ever eat anymore." Her mum's brow furrowed in thought. "We're you like this at Hogwarts as well, Roxanne?"

"No, of course not, Mum." Roxy did not meet her mother's eyes, not wanting to admit the truth-that she had _always_ had a small appetite, that her friends had pushed her to eat more than she felt was necessary at every meal. "I scarfed down enough for two people. I must just have a great metabolism."

"Hm." Mum seemed to buy it. "Be grateful for that much, while you have it. When you get to be my age, every little thing you eat seems to add on another kilo."

"Mum," Roxy said in a whiny voice, though she was smiling as she said it. "You're not fat, not even in the slightest. If anyone should be worried about their weight, it's you. I mean, when's the last time _you_ ate a proper meal, huh?"

"Your grandmother is expecting us soon," said Mum, pointedly ignoring Roxy's question as she looked up at the clock. Roxy rolled her eyes. Her mum would do anything to avoid having a conversation about her health, as though, if she ignored the problems long enough, they would all go away.

"Mum—"

"We should probably head over before her head explodes. She's been excited about celebrating your birthday—I think mostly because it's the last one of her grandchildren to graduate from Hogwarts and she's had to miss so many birthday parties while you were all in school."

Grandmum _was_ a bit too invested in hosting elaborate birthday and Christmas parties every year, inviting as many people as she could and cooking far too much food for even the Weasley family  
to be able to finish.

Roxy decided to drop the argument about her health versus her mother's, and merely nodded in agreement. "She seems to make up for it when we _are_ around though. Remember Vic's birthday last year? I still don't understand how she could make a cake that big."

"Your grandmother loves to go all out for stuff like this. Just…" Mum shrugged. "Just let her do this, alright? It's your birthday, I know, and that's supposed to mean it's _your_ day, but I think your grandmother just really needs this, okay?"

"Alright Mum. But if I end up with a cake that's bigger than me and then she tries to make us take all the cake home at the end, then I'm bolting."

"Understood."

Mum waved for her to stand up, and Roxy followed after her outside, stomping down the steps that led from their flat to the alley below. Roxy almost was tempted to ask why they were rushing over to the Burrow so early—the party wasn't actually going to start for nearly another hour—but she didn't have any desire to start her mother on a long rant about how they were _never_ on time.

"You ready?" her mum asked; Roxy nodded wordlessly. Her jaw clamped shut in anticipation. She _hated_ Apparition, but it was the fastest way of getting to the Burrow, especially with all the wards that were still attached to the Burrow, remnants from the war thirty years ago. "Alright, let's go, then, before Anne comes out here to discuss figures with me again."

Roxy grinned, remembering when that had happened a few weeks ago when Mum had come down to do some shopping in Diagon Alley and ended up in an hour long discussion with Anne about how many Puking Pastilles they would need to make to have enough orders through the end of the month.

Mum, satisfied by Roxy's nod, grabbed her by the wrist, and with a _pop_ , they disappeared from sight.

Where Roxy had been standing only mere moments before, a leaf lay motionless on the ground, undisturbed by the wind that was blowing past old newspapers and forgotten scraps of parchment. A dog, sniffing his way down the street, whined at the leaf and hurried to the other side of the pavement, as if something—or someone—frightened him away.

* * *

"Oh Roxy, it's so lovely to see you again!" cried Grandmum, throwing her arms around Roxy and hugging the small girl. "And happy birthday as well, of course!"

"Thanks Grandmum." Roxy shot her mother a desperate look to save her from her grandmother's rather _intense_ hug, but her mum only grinned teasingly and disappeared into another room, leaving Roxy with her grandmother.

"I can't believe you're nineteen already. I can remember my nineteenth birthday—oh, so many years ago, I barely even want to admit it. It was, hm, 1968? Your grandfather and I were engaged to be married—no, we were already married, that's it, back in August. Oh, what a beautiful wedding we had, though it had to be small, even then. Life was so different then. We hadn't yet learned to properly fear the Death Eaters—we knew about them, of course, but they weren't a big threat at that time as they would grow to be in just a few short years."

"Er..." Roxy didn't know how to respond to her grandmother's sudden trip down memory lane. She knew, of course, about the war—they were a part of the history curriculum at Hogwarts, and it was the sort of information available in most books.

But her family tended to avoid dwelling on the subject of the war, not wanting to speak too much about a time period that had costs the lives of friends and family—her uncle Fred, Teddy's parents, Uncle's Harry's entire family. So to hear her grandmother reminisce so freely about the beginning days of the Death Eater's reign was a bit shocking.

She gave her grandmother a questioning look, wondering if, perhaps, the old woman was beginning to go senile—that sort of thing had begun happening to Roxy's maternal grandmother, who sometimes forgotten that Roxy was not her mother, or what year it was.

"Oh, listen to me, prattling on about the old days. I swear, sometimes I'll look around and be surprised about how o _ld_ everyone's gotten. I remember the first time I met your mother—she was only a little older than you are now, and the boys had brought her home for Christmas dinner. And now, you're nineteen years old, and I'm an old, babbling woman who can't keep track of where I am or what I'm doing."

Roxy gave her grandmother another nervous smile, wondering if it would be considered rude for her to just bolt away from the conversation.

"Hello Molly." Mum back into the room just then, as if she could sense the discomfort on Roxy's face. Mum's hand settled heavily on Roxy's shoulder. "Has Vic and Teddy gotten here yet? I had some old baby clothes of—" She paused, and the other two females looked away, knowing exactly what she had been about to say. "Well, I have some old baby clothes that I wanted to give you. I promised I'd give them to her the next time I saw her. She's looking more and more frazzled each week."

"Well," Grandmum chuckled, "with two children, especially a couple of rambunctious little boys like hers, I can understand why she'd be. You know, I remember how chaotic it was with all these little boys running around the house, wreaking havoc wherever they went."

"I don't suppose Vic's aiming to reach her grandmother's numbers when it comes to children?" Mum and Grandmum laughed loudly at that and walked off, discussing babies and marriage as they headed into the outside, where the party was still being set up.

Roxy wandered into the kitchen, where pile of presents was sitting on the kitchen counter—more presents than was normal, even for a family as large and into the giving of presents for major events such as birthdays that her own family was. That meant that—most likely—guests beyond just family members had been invited to the celebration. Which also meant that Roxy's request that it be just a small, quiet event had gone unnoticed.

She knew Professor Longbottom wasn't here, because he would up at Hogwarts until the first term was over; Mrs. Longbottom was probably too busy at the Leaky Cauldron to show up, which at least meant that Roxy didn't have to deal with Matilda Longbottom on her own birthday. Alice would be at Hogwarts, and their youngest child, Hannah, was a first year now. She would not see either until the Christmas holidays, at best.

But Mrs. Scamander and her husband—that strange, dark man who always stared at Roxy whenever he came to visit like she were a particularly interesting puzzle he was struggling to decipher—might be around for the party. Their sons, the twins Lorcan and Lysander, would be at Hogwarts, wrapping up their final year, which was a bit of a disappointment. Lorcan was a Ravenclaw and Lysander a Slytherin; they had both been nice to Roxy during her time at Hogwarts, and she had helped them study for O.W.L.S.

Perhaps Aunt Katy would be around; that would be nice. Roxy hadn't seen her pseudo-aunt in several months, and she would appreciate being able to see Leanne again.

"Hello Roxanne. Happy birthday." Her cousin Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table, absent-mindedly running her hands across the wooden top. Roxy jumped at the sound of Lucy's voice, but smiled at the older girl. She had always liked Lucy, strange as her cousin was.

"Hey Lu. It's nice to see you again. It's been forever." Roxy sat down across from the older girl, taking in Lucy's thin, worn out face. Apparently, Roxy and her mother weren't the only people in the family not getting enough to eat on a regular basis.

"It's only been almost two months," Lucy replied in her normal, dry manner.

Roxy rolled her eyes. Lucy was always a very literal person, even when they had been children. "It's an expression Lucy. I know it hasn't actually been forever. I was only trying to be funny."

"Oh. Haha." Lucy maintained a straight face as she let out a laugh that was as forced as could be. Roxy only shrugged. She had mostly gotten used to Lucy's rather stiff demeanour—though she never understood why the Sorting Hat put Lucy into Hufflepuff, rather than Ravenclaw. She seemed more of the sort to fit into the house of eagles, especially since that was where Louis—Lucy's best and really only friend—had been sorted.

"So how have you been Lu? Flat-hunting still going well for you?"

Lucy did not appear to have heard Roxy speaking, as her eyes turned down towards the table, where her fingers were now scraping at the wood, faster than before, and her knuckles were tense.

"Lu?" Roxy asked, concerned. She remembered when they had been younger—maybe nine and fourteen—she had watched Lucy scrape away at her arm with a butter knife until the skin had broken. "Are you okay? Lucy? Can you hear me?" She reached across the table to grab Lucy's hand when the older girl suddenly looked up at Roxy, head snapping upwards.

"Do you know why the ghosts disappeared?" Lucy whispered. She didn't look at Roxy—because she wasn't searching for an answer. It was as if Lucy were merely talking to herself, and Roxy was privy to what was meant to be a private conversation. "Do you know where they all went, and why there haven't been any more since then?"

"Lu, the ghosts disappeared before I was even born. I'm probably one of the _last_ people to be asking that sort of question. After all, what would I know about that sort of stuff?"

"But she talked to you, didn't she? Told you they were here? I know she talked to you about them. I know she did."

"Who talked to me?"

"The little girl." Lucy turned to look at Roxy, her blue eyes stretched wide, almost inhumanly so. She looked ethereal, a being that did not belong in this world. "The little girl, she spoke to you. She told you they were here, that they were coming back."

"Lucy." Roxy shook her head in confusion. She didn't feel like dealing with her cousin's nonsense, not today. Not on her birthday. "I have no clue what you're talking about. At this point, you're just rambling nonsensically and I don't really appreciate it."

"The dead, the dead, the dead. They're coming back, can't you see that? Of course, they've always been here, they never truly left, but now they're coming back and they've chosen us to carry their message. Can't you see it? Can't you hear them? Your brother speaks to you, I know he does. So why do you not listen?"

Roxy reeled back from her cousin as if she had been slapped in the face. For five years, she had tried to avoid her brother's dead, maintaining that it didn't bother her, that she wasn't in pain.

But to hear Lucy ramble like this—to say that her brother, her _dead_ brother, was speaking to Roxy? That was too much. She didn't want to deal with Lucy's insanity any longer. She didn't want to sit here and let Lucy turn her into another psychotic dream of a delusional girl who spent far too much time with people like Mr. and Mrs. Scamander, who enjoyed living in a world of fantasies and ridiculous dreams.

"Lucy, I don't appreciate what you're saying," Roxy snapped. "I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or if you're being delusional or what, but I don't appreciate it at all. My brother is *dead*. He can't speak to me, and he _isn't_ speaking to me."

Lucy's face fell, the corners of her mouth dropping. "I don't understand," she mumbled. "They've chosen you. They've _chosen_ you. So why can you not see them? Why can you not hear them? That's how it's supposed to work. That's what happened to me—and the little girl, too, she mustn't be forgotten. The children are important as well, yes, they are they first to be sought out because they are easiest—and children grow up into adults who _see_ what others do not, and _hear_ what others choose to ignore. We have been chosen. We see them, and we hear them. But why not you? Why do you not, when you, like the little girl and I—and some many others—have been chosen?"

"Lucy, you aren't making any sense, and you're really upsetting me. Please, _stop_ saying these things. Should I go get Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey? Or perhaps Molly, or Louis? Do you need help? You're—you're really starting to frighten me."

Lucy shook her head, digging her fingernails into the wood. "I don't understand. Why can't you _see_? Why can't you _hear_? So many others…so many others, they don't ever even get the call, and they live their whole lives without ever seeing the truth. So why, when they have selected you, chosen you, do you not see?"

Her blue eyes were so wide that the whites seemed to have practically disappeared. Her arms were trembling, and her skin had gone so pale that Roxy could see her cousin's veins. She looked ready to fall apart right there at the kitchen table.

Roxy reached out to grab her cousin's hand once again, and this time, Lucy did not stop the younger girl when she placed her hand over Lucy's, feeling the small digits scrape against the wood as she kept repeating "why, _why_ " over and over.

Roxy was more than just frightened now—she knew that, when Lucy had been a very little girl, she had suffered from seizures, and had visited both St Mungo's and muggle doctors alike in search of a way to make the seizures stop. Lucy had been given medicine and potions, and her seizures had stopped almost entirely by the time Roxy had been born, but she knew they were still a possibility at any moment, if Lucy did not keep track of her medications.

"Lucy, will you please talk to me? Why are you so obsessed with these ghosts? Why do you think they're talking to you—or trying to talk to _me_ , for that matter? And what little girl are you talking about? I don't understand what you're saying and…and it's really upsetting and scary and…" She shook her head, at a loss for words.

"Lucy! Roxy!" Their grandmother poked her head into the kitchen, giving both girls a bright, happy grin, not noticing the frightened look on Roxy's face, nor Lucy's still shaking frame. "The party is beginning, if you'd like to come outside now. We'll open presents in a little bit, but for now, I thought we could have some fun, alright?"

"Alright Grandmum," Lucy said, her voice flat. She stopped trembling, and her colour returned to normal, as if she had not been on the verge of having a fit just seconds ago. Lucy gave Grandmum a tight-lipped smile and stood up, chair scraping noisily across the floor. "C'mon Rox," she said, looking down at a bewildered Roxy, who was struggling to comprehend the sudden shift in Lucy's demeanour. "You don't want to hide indoors for your whole birthday party, now do you?"

"No, I suppose not," Roxy mumbled, also standing up, and followed her cousin and grandmother outside. But she stored Lucy's words away for later, knowing that—eventually—she would need to get answers from the older girl. Whether these ghosts were mere delusions, or something more, Roxy was genuinely scared by Lucy's sudden outburst.

She wasn't going to leave her cousin's declarations about Roxy being able to see ghosts go away—not when this was the second time that Lucy had insisted that Roxy had such a gift.

But for now, she merely headed out to her party, trying to fake a smile.


	14. Beginning to unravel my life

After two and a half weeks of no word from Lucy—despite owling her cousin three times and having Mum's owl return with an unopened letter and even attempting a Floo call once to Lucy's flat that was never picked up—Roxy decided that her older cousin was avoiding Roxy, which was, if anything, even stranger than Lucy's near fit at their grandmother's kitchen table.

Why was Lucy avoiding her all of the sudden? Had she suddenly decided that Roxy—"chosen" or not—didn't need to know about the "ghosts" that were supposedly trying to reach out to Roxy and Lucy?

And the little girl that Lucy had brought up, the one who could also _see them_ ; Roxy now had a strong suspicion she knew who Lucy had been speaking about, and she didn't think—if she were proven to be correct—that it was very likely that anyone would choose Roxy and her niece for the same cause.  
But she remembered, at the party, when Faith had insisted that her father was sitting in the corner of the sitting room. That _Freddie_ , whom Faith had never met, was sitting right there in the Burrow and was talking to them. If Faith was seeing Freddie at parties, and if Lucy was insisting that the ghosts had never left the world at all...

No.

Roxy shook her head, trying to clear it. She was just letting a bunch of weird coincidences and eerie behaviour scare her into seeing things that weren't really there. The ghosts were _gone_. Everybody knew that; after all, what good would it serve them to fade away from sight for twenty years, so that no one could see them or hear them?

It just didn't make any sense. This was clearly all just another one of Lucy's silly daydreams—she was spending too much time with Mrs. Scamander, letting the older blonde fill Lucy's head with paranoia and conspiracies. The ghosts were not—and could not be—back. Roxy was just letting the flood of panic sweep her along into believing something that simply was not true.

If she let Lucy sweep her up into a bunch of nonsense, then Roxy would quickly lose track of what mattered; what did it matter that Lucy thought she saw ghosts, when there was no conceivable way for that to ever possibly be true?

Roxy sighed, rolling her shoulders back to relieve the tension that had begun to build up between her blades. Why was she getting so worked up over something that she knew wasn't even true? Obviously, if she just thought about it for a minute, it was rather obvious that Lucy was either playing some sort of trick on Roxy, or she was in legitimate need of psychiatric help.

Because any reasonable, rationally thinking person could easily come to the understanding that _of course_ the ghosts weren't coming back—and of course they _had_ left—and Lucy's protest that this was simply not the case would soon find themselves shelved away amongst the thousands of other silly and preposterous conspiracies, like the wizard who had thought the moon was full of cheese and could be reached by broom.

* * *

At that week's family dinner—which Roxy had gone to by herself, as Mum seemed to have come down with some sort of cold and was lying in bed with a cauldron of Pepper-up Potion—Roxy was placed right in between her cousins Rose and Albus.

Roxy wasn't sure _what_ had happened since she last saw them, but an argument must have broken out between the two because Rose was refusing to look Albus in the eye, while Al insisted on loudly clearing his throat every time Rose attempted to start a sentence. Across the table, Molly kept rolling her eyes at the younger cousins' actions, but no one had reprimanded them yet.

Roxy, to be honest, found it rather amusing to watch the two—adults, and best friends since they were in nappies—acting like little kids once more. It was funny to see how, despite being twenty-two, her cousins could still seem like six-year-olds when they got mad, instead of acting their age. Roxy certainly thought it made _her_ seem more mature by comparison.

"Can you pass me that plate, Roxy?" Rose asked, pointing towards a plate that was on the other side of Albus' elbow, far from Roxy's reach.

She stared at her cousin, unsure of what to do. "Uh. I, uh, I dunno, Rose. Um. I can't really, uh, reach it, and, er…"

"Here," muttered Albus, rolling his eyes. "At least one of us ought to be civil and act our age, don't you think, Roxy? Instead of being petty and fighting about stuff that isn't going to be changed just because _some_ of us don't agree with it?"

"Or, _some_ of us could recognise that when a person of much higher intellect proposes an alternative that provides better arrangements, then maybe it would be wiser to go with the more appropriate option, don't you think, Roxy?" Rose's voice was clipped, sarcastic, and it made Roxy nervous.

Suddenly she didn't think it was quite so funny to see her older cousins fighting like little kids. Especially Albus and Rose, who were always so friendly and nice and considerate.

But now, to see them being passive-aggressive towards each other—and especially to drag Roxy into all of it—she wasn't so sure it was amusing. In fact, she very suddenly wanted them both to stop arguing and make up right there at the table.

"I don't understand you two," said Grandmum, letting out a small sigh. "You're twenty-two years old! Rosie, you're _married_ , and Albus is about to be—"

"Understatement of the century. He's worse than any girl I've ever met. Talk about a total bride-zilla," Rose grumbled under her breath, and Albus attempted to kick her response, but only managed to whack Roxy in the shin by accident.

"You ought to be acting more mature, now that you're adults. You ought to be setting a good example for your younger siblings—and for Roxy, too! What if she suddenly starts thinking it's okay to break her grandmother's heart right here at the kitchen table just because she can't let go of some childish argument for long enough to enjoy a good meal with her family?" Grandmum said with a frown directed at both cousins.

If she had been standing up, Roxy imagined her grandmother's hands would be on her hips, waggling her finger at Rose and Albus like she had caught them playing Quidditch without the proper equipment. Somehow, though, with just her small frown—and with the hint of sadness lining her face—Grandmum managed to look more disappointed in the two cousins than any time before.

"We're sorry Grandmum," the two mumbled abashedly, neither able to meet the matriarch's eyes. Rose slumped forward in her seat, while Albus let his fork scrape across his empty plate.

"Mmhm. Now," announced Grandmum loudly, clapping her hands together. "I think that dinner is over, so why don't you crazy children—and any old people who think their hips won't break for trying—start up a nice game of Quidditch outside, yeah?"

The family cleared out pretty quickly after that, with most of the family disappearing outside to claim brooms and various positions on the homemade Quidditch pitch. Rose drifted after her brother without a word; Albus, instead, slipped up the staircase, claiming he wanted to "look at something" in Aunt Ginny's old room.

That left just Roxy to hand her grandmother dirty dishes and watch the old witch as she meticulously waved her wand over every plate, pan, and cup to make sure it was properly cleaned. It was always fun to watch Grandmum clean, because she used magic to do it, unlike Mum, who insisted that they were perfectly capable of doing it the muggle way.

"I don't suppose you know why those two are bickering, do you?" asked Grandmum, but Roxy only shrugged. She had an idea—something to do with wedding planning—but Roxy couldn't be certain. "I just don't understand. I mean, those three were so close during their days at Hogwarts, but now? To see them argue and fight over something so silly as an invitation list or a colour scheme?" Grandmum shook her head sadly. "I hope everything gets settled soon, and they can go back to being reasonable adults once more. I hate to see you all fight."

"How long has there been a sign on Dad and Uncle Fred's door?" Roxy asked suddenly. She wasn't sure where the intense need to ask had come from, but now that the words were out, Roxy couldn't take them back.

Her grandmum dropped the pan she had been pointing her wand at to send it scrubbing, her face losing all colour. She turned to look at Roxy with an expression that could, at best, be described as fright. "What sign are you talking about Roxy?" she whispered.

"There's a sign, er, on their door? Something about "do not enter"? It wasn't there the last time we spent the night, but I noticed it one time when I was watching the house, so I thought that maybe it'd been hung up recently or something?"

Grandmum shook her head. "Roxy, that sign has been in your grandfather's shed for thirty years. No one's touched it since your father tried to blast it apart and threw it into a box. I don't know what you thought you saw, but there's no sign on that door upstairs."

Roxy started, at a loss for words. No, she had _seen_ the sign, seen the messy scrawl that she recognised as her dad's. She _had_ seen it, she had. And it hadn't looked like anyone had tried to blast it—merely old, like it had been taped up a long, long time ago and then forgotten.

"Roxy?" Her grandmum gave her a questioning look, concern flashing in her eyes. "Are you alright? I would think that nineteen is a bit young to be losing track of things, don't you?"

"No. No." Roxy shook her head. "I _saw_ it, I know I did. It was hung up on Dad's old bedroom. I _saw_ it. I'm not crazy or imagining it. I swear, it was there, when I went upstairs and-"

Was this what it was like to be Lucy? To be Mrs. Scamander? To have people look at you like you were crazy and spouting nonsensical ideas that had no basis in reality?

But no; Roxy _knew_ she had seen that sign hanging on her father's old room. She had not been so drunk as to imagine an old sign that she barely even recalled had existed before she spotted it.

Her grandmum stepped closer, forehead creased. "Roxy? Perhaps you need to lie down for a bit? You're looking a bit flushed, I mean, so—"

"No!" Roxy yelled, surprising even herself. Her chest was heaving, her heart beating rapidly. "No," she said again, struggling to sound calm. "I'm not sick or crazy. I'll prove it to you. I'll prove that I'm not just imagining this."

She stood up, fists clenched, and sprinted up the stairs, feeling her blood pumping in her ears. When she finally got to the door, though, Roxy paused, stopping herself at the last moment to blink at the door. She looked at the wood, which did not even hint of having held a sign recently. There was no shadow, no lighter set of wood to indicate that anything had hung on the door in ages.

"No, that's not possible, I'm not imagining things. I'm _not_. I just can't be." Roxy shook her head again. She knew she had seen a sign right here, just above eye level; it had been the sign from the shed, she remembered that now, she _knew_ that. But it had been here, the night of the party.

She had...she had been standing here, because Faith had convinced her to come up here and Roxy had seen the sign _Enter at your own risk_ and everything had gone dizzy and she had felt so lightheaded. It had been real—Roxy knew it was real, because it had to be. She wasn't going crazy. She wasn't seeing things.

 _Maybe you were drunk. Too drunk. That happens sometimes and it can cause hallucinations, can't it?_ Roxy thought to herself, but even still she didn't recall having been very drunk at that point, because Emily had left Faith with Roxy, and Emily wouldn't have done that if Roxy was too terribly drunk.

Right?

"Rox?" It was Albus, coming down the stairs in that odd way of his; he made almost no noise as he moved from one step to the next, and if he hadn't spoken, Roxy wouldn't have even noticed he was there at all. "Hey, is something wrong, Rox?"

Roxy looked up at her cousin, his features watery and blurry through her tears.

(She hadn't even realised she was crying.)

Albus was thin, with small, narrow shoulders and a few scattered freckles across his cheekbones. For the most part, he was almost a mirror copy of his father, with Uncle Harry's bright green eyes, his narrow nose, and messy hair. There was very little of Aunt Ginny in Albus—perhaps the cheekbones could be hers', but Uncle Harry's were also very regal-looking, so it was hard to tell.

He was four years older than her, a Gryffindor like his siblings and parents and grandparents and like so many other generations of Potters and Weasleys that had come before him. But he was not pompous like his brother, nor reckless like his sister. In fact, many times, Roxy had suspected that Gryffindor had not been the only house that the Sorting Hat had offered to place Albus in.

The Hat had done the same thing to her—offering to place her in Gryffindor, because that was where most of her family had been sorted, that's where Weasleys _belonged_ , and so, the Sorting Hat would put her there, if that was what she wanted. If that was what she asked for. But her full potential would never be achieved, not in the house of lions.

And besides, Roxy suspected, if she had let the Hat put her with her brother, then it would have only proven that she was not brave enough for the lions, because to let herself pick the easy route would be a cowardly, self-serving move.

No, there had been only one house that was ever meant for her. And, like a Gryffindor, who was brave and made choices with the consequences be _damned_ , she had let the Hat place her in Slytherin.

Maybe life would have been different if Albus had also been placed in Slytherin. Maybe she would have adapted more quickly and easily with an older cousin to guide her amongst the snakes, like all her others cousins had. Or maybe she would have simply become too dependent on Albus and begun to use him as a crutch, refusing to ever branch out and approach any of her house-mates in favour of befriending the one person she knew she could trust.

"There was a sign here," Roxy mumbled. Anyone else probably would have given Roxy a questioning look, but Albus merely nodded.

"Uncle Fred and your dad's sign, right? The one with the warning about staying away?" Albus moved closer, reaching out to the door, his fingers running across the old wood. When Roxy gave him a puzzled glance, he shrugged. "You can see the faded area, where it would've been, thirty years ago. And I've seen it in the shed a few times, when James would send me in there to go digging around for brooms. So I know what you're talking about."

"But I saw it _here_ just a little while ago. It was—it was actually hanging up, and I ran across it one night when I was house-sitting for Grandmum and Grandad. I _swear_ I didn't just imagine it."

"I'm sure," Albus said in an agreeable manner, though Roxy was suspicious. Albus had always been the friendliest of the cousins, but Roxy couldn't be sure her cousin wasn't about to turn this all into a big joke at Roxy's expense.

"I didn't imagine it," she said again, more forcefully. Albus nodded, no hint of a smile on his face, and no teasing lilt to his voice, like James might have had.

"I know, Roxy. I believe you when you say you didn't imagine it. Lucy's been trying to convince the rest of us for years that there's something wrong with—well, not this house, so much as the whole world. Something is missing. And you seeing the sign up on their door, even though it hasn't been hanging in three decades...well, I suppose that's just another way that the universe is telling us that things aren't how they should be."

Roxy shot her cousin a look of disbelief. Did he seriously believe Lucy and her crazy theories about all the ghosts and such? Or _was_ this actually all a big joke, and Albus was going to start laughing at her because she was gullible and foolish and paranoid?

She tried to read his expression, peering up at Albus' intense green eyes. Roxy chewed briefly on her bottom lip, while Albus continued to smile down at her innocently. He didn't _seem_ to making her into a joke, but she could remember "friendly" Gryffindors from Hogwarts who had turned out to be the nastiest of them all, pretending to like her at first only to mock Roxy in front of the whole school.

 _But he's your cousin. He wouldn't be messing with you, would he? Not about this, right? Isn't family supposed to care for each other?_ Right. Roxy snorted at that thought. If family was supposed to love one another and care unconditionally, no one had ever told James, who picked on her. No one had ever told Dominique, who had called Roxy a dirty snake and then disappeared forever. No one had ever told Hugo, who shied away from Roxy like she might convert him to the Dark Arts.

"You're making fun of me, aren't you?" asked Roxy sullenly, imagining that her cousin was most likely smiling internally at how naive she was. "You're just playing along to—to make me feel better. Is Lucy a part of this, too, to make up for all the times she's been teased for having weird ideas? She got you to go along while she pulls a prank—taking the mickey out on me-to convince me that I'm going mad. Isn't that what's happening here?"

Albus' eyes widened, and he shook his head frantically. "No, no Roxy, we aren't pranking you or anything like that. I promise." He was so earnest that Roxy wanted to believe what he was saying, but some part of her held back.

Perhaps Albus _was_ just another Gryffindor, who saw her as a dumb little snake. He was just like his brother-just like all those older Gryffindors—who had mocked her and teased her throughout school, all trying to make her feel bad at the house she had been put in at Hogwarts. _Albus is nice, though. He never made fun of you in school._

But maybe he was starting it up now.

"No." She shook her head. "No, you're mocking me. You think this is funny. Let's make little Roxy into a big joke. Let's make her think she's seeing things that aren't really there, that the ghosts are all coming back, that—"

"Wait, what?"

Roxy tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. Was this all just another part of the joke, or did Albus honestly not know about Lucy's insistence that the ghosts were all still here—that they had never even left.

"Lucy." She looked over at the faded wood of the door, remembering when she had stood here two months ago and seen that stupid sign. "She thinks all the ghosts—all the dead people—they're coming back, or they never left, and some of us can see them, some of us can hear them."

"But most of us can't?" Roxy nodded. "And she thinks that she's one of them. Thinks _you're_ one of them." Roxy nodded again. "Is that connected to the door? To the sign being here when no one's touched it in years?"

Roxy shrugged. That was why she had come up here, wasn't it? Because some part of her suspected that all of these strange events were coming together, like a puzzle, to form something that was so intensely bigger than herself.

Lucy's insistence that she could talk to ghosts; Faith claiming that her father was at the Burrow; the sign appearing on the door and pulling at Roxy; waking up in her brother's room when she had even gone so far as locking her bedroom door to keep from leaving. And back in June, when they had graduated. She had put Freddie's picture in her trunk, but had returned to find it still out, as if someone had moved it while the ceremony was going on.

All of these things, separate from each other, seemed like nothing. They were just strange events with explainable answers—Lucy being a dreamer, Roxy wandering in the night—but all of it together, happening within such a short time? There was too much happening all at once for it to be mere coincidences. Something was happening, and Roxy was quickly finding herself in the middle of it.

And she wasn't sure this was something she _wanted_ to find herself involved with, because when the world changes, not everyone makes it out untouched or unbroken.

Not everyone even makes it out alive.


	15. In search of some answers

There was a surprising lack of books covering the subject of ghosts, as Roxanne discovered when she headed over to Flourish and Blotts a few days later. Most of what she found were rather short guides or dealing with dealing a ghoul in your cupboard, or how to keep a poltergeist from throwing the good china.

Very little had been written at all in the last twenty years, as though everyone had decided that—following their disappearance—there was no real need to find an explanation for where all the spooks and spectres had gone to.

"Excuse me?" she asked, approaching the attendant's desk, where a bored-looking, twenty-something, witch was flipping through a copy of _Witch Weekly_ , seemingly oblivious that anyone had even entered the store. "Excuse me?" Roxy tried again, but the girl only turned to the next page with a flick of her wand.

Roxy sighed and craned her neck to look behind the counter, hoping there was someone— _anyone_ —else who was around to help her out. Seeing no one, however, Roxy looked back at the older girl, who was still ignoring her presence. "Excuse me? Can you help me with something, please?" Roxy asked as oud as she dared, but still received no indication that the attendant had heard.

Roxy looked away, annoyance making her skin flush, and her gaze fell on the shelves behind her, and suddenly she got a great idea to _force_ the attendant to pay attention. Roxy headed over to the bookcases, eyes skimming over the texts for the longest one she could find.

 _Voyages with Vampires_ , by someone named Gilderoy Lockhart—Roxy presumed he was probably the smiling, toothy blond waving up at her cheekily from the front cover—appeared to be more than enough weight for Roxy's plan.

Grinning to herself, she hefted the book in her arms and headed back over to where the rude attendant was _still_ reading her magazine.

"Oi!" Roxy said loudly, dropping the heavy book onto the counter in front of her. Though she had been _expecting_ a loud noise, the dull boom of the book hitting wood still made Roxy jump slightly, and she had to keep from squeaking in shock.

The attendant, on the other hand, shrieked and dropped her wand, which made the magazine flutter listlessly to the floor below. She looked around wildly for the source of the sudden noise, and when her eyes finally fell on Roxy, who was standing in front of the counter with an almost manic grin, the attendant scowled.

"Did you _want_ something?" she demanded coldly of Roxy, glaring down at the undersized female before her. Roxy sensed that the older girl was trying to intimidate her into leaving, or at least apologizing, but Roxy only continued to give in to the attendant, feeling rather proud of herself for her plan.

"Hi!" Roxy said brightly toe scowling girl. "I was _trying_ to get your attention earlier, but you just seemed _so_ wrapped up in your reading that I don't think you even noticed I was standing here. But that's okay, because I'm pretty patient." She grinned.

"What do you want?" the girl snapped, rolling her eyes. "I was kinda doing stuff before you so _rudely_ interrupted me." She huffed, arms crossed, as if Roxy had personally insulted her by daring to ask for help. "Like, this job is really stressful, and I'm just trying to relax for just a little while without anyone bothering me."

"Maybe you ought to have closed and locked the front door then, if you were on your break, so no one comes in here?" Roxy offered.

"Oh, no, silly," the girl said, waving her hands absently. "I already _had_ my break a while ago. I just _really_ don't want to help out with customers right now, y'know? It's so _stressful_. I mean, checking people out, looking for books, dusting the shelves? It's a lot of work."

Roxy nodded, though she was a bit of at a loss for words. If the girl didn't _want_ to work, then was she even here in the first place? Shaking her head, Roxy attempted to steer the conversation back to its original purpose. "Uh, well, I need a few books on ghosts—like, more recent books, ones that've been written since 2005—and I noticed that you didn't seem to have that much in stock about them at all, so I was wondering if you maybe had any more in the back, or at least knew where I could get books on the subject, if this _is_ all that you have."

"Ghosts?" The other girl's brow furrowed in thought. "Why would you want to know about ghosts? Aren't they, like, all dead and stuff? And, anyway, when's the last time anyone even saw a ghost? I mean, aren't they all poofed? Gone forever? It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Since 2005, yes—which is _why_ I need to know if there are any more _recent_ books on the topic. Surely at least _one_ other person besides me has taken an interest in where they've all gone to, right? I can't be the first person in twenty-three years to publicly ask for more information. I mean, every single ghost, spook, and spirit just _vanishes_ off the face of the planet and no one even bats an eye? How ridiculous is that?"

"Look, I don't know about any of this, okay? I just work here because my uncle got me the job since it isn't supposed to be a whole lot of hard work. I don't care about any ghosts or where they'd floated off to. Really, I'm just here for the pay check and my interest doesn't go any further than that." The girl shrugged and bent down to grab her magazine off the floor.

Roxy deflated, all of the energy leaving her as quickly as it had come. If nobody even cared enough to research the mass disappearances of all of the ghosts, how was she expected to be able to find anything about why they had left, or where they had gone to?

If nobody else cared enough, how was she supposed to be able to definitively prove one way or another whether or not she was going crazy, or if there was a possibility that the dead had never truly left in the first place?

She sighed, her shoulders slumping, but Roxy knew what it was time to stop fighting. This bored employee clearly didn't know anything, and all of the books available at Flourish and Blotts were not enough to tell her anything. This was a dead end—the first of what would probably be many, Roxy presumed, but it was still disappointing to run into a wall so quickly.

"Okay, thanks anyway," she glumly told the girl behind the counter, who had already gone back to her magazine, and only absently waved good-bye to Roxy as she headed towards the door, leaving behind the _Voyages with Vampires_.

"Hey! Ms. Weasley?" hissed a voice from behind a bookcase just as Roxy's fingers hit the door handle. She turned to see a middle-aged man with rather plain features—lightly tan skin and a thin nose, with mildly thinning hair made him the sort that could be easily lost in a crowd.

Roxy stared at the man, her hand still resting on the door. Years and years of warning from her parents to stay away from strange people she didn't know had been ingrained into Roxy's mind, and it was that part of her that screamed to leave the bookstore _now_ before the man could get any further in his approach.

"Ms. Weasley, please, I can tell you where to find more information on ghosts—newer information, about the disappearances and what happened to them all."

Her head jolted, eyes widening to the point of giving her an almost cartoonish appearance, and had Roxy been able to see herself in the mirror at that moment, she would have laughed to see the result of her own shock.

"Did you say you had information about the ghosts?" she asked, letting her hand slide off of the door, all thought of avoiding strangers suddenly leaving her at the mention of ghosts.

"You're looking for information on ghosts, right?" the man asked, leaning in closer as his voice dropped even more quietly. "I think I might know a man—s-someone who can talk to you about this sort of thing. Er, not talk, really, so much as he can show you some things that I think will be of your interest. He's called the Librarian, see? An older gentleman—they, uh, say he collects information about things that the general population wouldn't want to know about."

"What sort of things?" Roxy asked, uncertain. If there was a possibility that she was about to be connected to someone who had _unsavoury_ ties...she had heard in History what happened to the sorts of people who went too far to seek information that was better left alone.

Roxy had no desire to be one of those people, nor to have any involvement in the sorts of causes they usually rallied around.

"Oh, all sorts of things. The Dark Arts, creatures whose parts are used in more disliked potions. I couldn't promise you that he has any definitive information about your study on ghosts, but he's the most likely source." The man shrugged when Roxy frowned at him. "Yes, I know I said his information was _certain_ , but I had to get your attention somehow, now didn't I? I knew you wouldn't just come traipsing over to a complete stranger for nothing."

"So you lied? And you could be lying now, couldn't you? There might be no Librarian—this might just be a trap, because you're one of those kooks who has something against my family, so you see me here and think to yourself 'oh, a young girl in trouble makes for an easy target.' How do I not know that that isn't the case?"

The man laughed. "They say paranoia runs easily in the Weasley family these days, though who can really blame you? With so many from the Dark side still out there, all plotting out the death of your aunts and uncles and cousins? I'd be a little paranoid, too." He shook his head lightly. "But I promise you, the Librarian is _the_ place to go if there's something you want to know, especially if you've hit all other dead ends."

"Where could I find him, then? Not that I'm saying I'm the sort of person who goes chasing after information on the word of a total stranger, but…if I _were_ to go looking for him, where would I go to find him?"

The man turned the bookshelf next to him, grabbed a book at random, and ripped a page out of the back, ignoring Roxy's protests. He scribbled something down using a quill from his pocket, before handing it back to her. "Here's where he is. Just…keep in mind, he isn't a normal man. He's not bad or anything—at least, I don't think he is—but there's something about him that just seems to set off a lot of people who meet him."

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, there isn't anyone alive who has claimed to ever hear him say even a singleword, though he's never been proven to be mute."

* * *

Roxy looked up at the address in front of her, then back down at her paper, confirming that the two of them were a match. The building she was standing in front of was a small building that had once been an office of some sort, tucked away into one of the quieter parts of Knockturn Alley.

The path here had nearly convinced Roxy to turn away from her investigation altogether—the leering stares from strangers, the chill that went over her the second she stepped foot away from Diagon. She didn't like it here—too many stories about children being kidnapped, or of criminals found hiding in the slippery alleyways that made up Knockturn, but with a determined scowl, Roxy had continued to march further and further into Knockturn.

Roxy _had_ to find out all that she could about the ghosts, if only to alleviate her own quickly growing concerns. If Lucy turned out to be wrong, and this was just another fantasy of hers, then everything would soon go back to normal. But if not…

She took a deep breath and knocked on the door before stepping back to wait. Thankfully, a few moments later, there was a shuffling from inside, and she was soon greeted by a tall, pale man who stared down at Roxy with curious, light blue eyes. He was older—maybe mid-fifties or so—but didn't seem very intimidating compared to some of the others she had passed by on her way here.

"Hello, sir. I'm Roxy Weasley, and I hear that you collect information on things that most people wouldn't have access to. I've been told you're called the Librarian?" She tried to smile, but there was something strange about the man, who looked at Roxy without saying a word. "Could I maybe step inside so we can discuss this further?"

The man gave her a small smile which did nothing to calm Roxy's nerves, but stepped aside to let her in. She almost turned around to walk away, but the part of her that just wanted answers to all of this wouldn't let her leave. Roxy headed inside, jumping when the door shut behind her.

He led her downstairs, to the basement, where shelf upon shelf of books and aging parchment sat before her, collecting dust. It was bigger than any bookstore she had ever seen before—bigger, even, than the Hogwarts library, or the collection of tomes at Henrik's. There were probably more than a thousand manuscripts here, all with information on a vast range of topics.

"I don't know where to start," she said, looking up at the Librarian, who nodded, and nudged her towards the left. Roxy followed after him, turning one way and then the next, at first trying to memorise the route they were taking—left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right—but it quickly became too complex to keep track of.

Finally, he stopped in front of a shelf that seemed no different than any other. Nothing was labelled, and she wasn't sure how the Librarian knew this was the correct one, but he pulled out an ancient piece of parchment and handed it to her with a pleased look on his face.

"Is this the right one?" asked Roxy, taking the parchment into her hands. "I don't understand how you're able to find anything in this place at all, it's so big and confusing, but…" The Librarian leaned in and blew the dust off of the papers that Roxy was holding, making her cough. "Alright, I get it, you want me to read it. You didn't have to blow all that crap in my face, though."

She peered over the small handwriting, straining her eyes to make out a phrase or two, though the rest was mostly an incomprehensible mess—either written in too hurried a scrawl, or so badly distorted with ages as to be entirely unintelligible. The parchment was practically dust in her hands, the edges curling and turning mush just from a few seconds of pressure from her finger pads.

"Is this all remains?" Roxy asked, looking at the man who was called 'the Librarian'. "I mean, no offence, but I can't really read any of this. Like, look here," she said, pointing at one of the few sections where the scrawl almost verged on readable. "Is this a 'g' or a 'q'? I honestly can't tell at all."

Roxy handed the parchment back to the Librarian, trying to keep the disappointment from crossing her face. This was clearly just another dead end; even if she _had_ been able to make any words out, the writing was so old that it would been like trying to read any entirely different language. Once again, Roxy was left to wonder why no one had cared enough to preserve any sort of record about ghosts over the years.

"I mean, thanks for the help, though," she said, trying to be polite. "At least you were more helpful than the last person I talked to about this." Roxy shrugged, though the Librarian merely continued to stare at her, the old parchment resting in his still outstretched hand like he was offering it back to her. Roxy rather wished the Librarian would talk so he could explain why he had given her this useless collection parchment that she couldn't even read.

Realising she would be getting no answers soon—and with annoyed disappointment settling uncomfortably in her stomach—Roxy turned to leave, but she felt the Librarian's cold fingers wrap around her wrist, tugging her back to face him with a sharp twist of his hand. The Librarian stared at her with his small, pale blue eyes, imploring Roxy to understand a message that he could not convey with words and that she could not comprehend without.

"I'm sorry," she told him, "I don't understand. The writing makes no sense at all, and you obviously can't tell me what it says, unless you're somehow able to read it and have the time to transcribe it all to me. But I doubt that's the case, so what more is there to stay for?"

Yet he still would not let her go, his fingers only wrapped that much more tightly around her wrist, until the skin that he was squeezing began to change colours—turning a dark, ugly red—and she wanted to yell in pain.

Roxy tried to pull away, but the Librarian was apparently stronger than she was—for she didn't budge at all—so Roxy was only able to pull uselessly against his cold flesh, frantically looking around the room for a way out of the Librarian's grip without attacking him.

Roxy wondering if maybe she had completely misjudged this entire situation—misjudged the _Librarian_ , who had only moments before seemed like a friendly enough man who was willing to help her out—because he was holding onto her wrist so tightly that Roxy had to admit to herself that she was growing _afraid_. Why would he not let her go?

Fuck. _Fuck_. Her mum had always said not to go to Knockturn Alley—that there were murders and thieves who would love to hurt a pretty little girl like her if she ever made the mistake of going down here. Uncle Harry had told her stories of the sorts of criminals that had been dragged out of here by Aurors and thrown into Azkaban for the rest of their lives.

 _Why did you come down here, you idiot? What could possibly be worth risking your own life for just to get a few answers about something you don't even believe in? You're supposed to be a Slytherin—you're not stupid, you don't charge blindly into these situations without thinking of the consequences first! Why are you even here?_

"Please," she said, turning to look up at the Librarian. "Please, I just came here for answers. I just wanted to know about the ghosts, that's all. My—my cousin, she said that there's the possibility that they're coming back or…or that they never left at all. That's what I'm looking into, that's all. I just wanted answers! Answers! That's all, I promise!"

All of the sudden, the Librarian let her go, the grip on her wrist loosening and his hand fell away to rest limply by his side. He looked away sadly for a moment, then back at her, a look of understanding in his eyes. He nodded, as if responding to a question he had asked himself, before raising up once more the hand that held the collection of parchment.

"I already told you I can't read this, sir. I'm terribly sorry, but I need to go, if there's nothing more that you can do to help me." Roxy was shaking, trembling all over, and she almost wanted to cry from the stress of the situation. What was she getting involved with—lunatics and strangers that whispered to her about information that didn't exist? How much worse could all of this get before she finally gave up trying to find answers to a question that could not be solved?

 _I don't want to die here. Not for this._

But the Librarian waved her to follow him, leading Roxy back through the maze of shelves and back upstairs, to the sitting room. He pointed at the couch, indicating for her to sit down while he continued on into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he came back with a few blank scraps of parchment, along with a quill.

"Can you read this?" she asked him incredulously. "Can you tell me what all of this says? Oh, please tell me you know how to translate this!" Or was this just another trick? Was he really trying to help her, or just trying to earn her trust? Roxy was too confused—she didn't know whether or not to trust the Librarian, or whether she could even trust herself at this point.

 _All I wanted was an answer so my life would go back to normal. I didn't ask to be sent on some wild goose chase to who-knows-where, hunting down information from nuts hiding behind bookcases and mute men who attack me._

"Can you tell me anything at all?" she asked, quietly this time, hoping she could trust this man, hoping that he truly wanted to help her. "Please, I just need to know."

"Yes." The Librarian's voice was barely more than a whisper, croaky from years of disuse, and she barely even registered that it was a response at all. "Yes, I can help you. I can help you see them—and to see the truth as well. Your time has come, Roxanne Weasley. You have been chosen."


	16. The old man sings to me

"I'm sorry, what?" Roxy asked, recoiling from the Librarian in shock. "First of all, you can _talk_? What the hell? Why haven't you been talking the whole time, then, if you always could? Do you just like fucking with people or what? Like, seriously, what the actual _hell_ , man?"

"I'm not much for the company of other people," said the Librarian simply, giving Roxy a small shrug of his shoulders. "They've all gotten so busy and talkative over the years, but it doesn't really feel as though anything much ever gets said. So," he sighed, "I mostly keep quiet and too myself—which is rather easy, of course, since most people don't even know I exist, and the majority of those who _do_ don't seem to want much to do with me. You get used to being alone after a while."

"Well you're suddenly talking a whole lot for a man who rarely ever speaks," she noted with a forced smile. The Librarian did a good job at putting her on edge—she could see why he wasn't particularly well liked.

"I've not said a thing in almost fourteen years. My voice aches to even speak, and I fear I might just have forgotten the rules of conversation. So forgive me, my dear, if I ramble on for a bit."

He turned away from Roxy to dip his quill into a suddenly summoned inkpot, then scribbled a few words out onto the parchment that rested on his table. There was silence in the house except for the quiet scratching of the quill and a ticking sound that echoed from a clock somewhere else in the house.

She watched him, hunched over the parchment, twisting his neck to look between one pile and the other. After a few minutes of writing, he paused and looked up at Roxy once more.

"These words are very old. Not quite as old as Hogwarts, perhaps, but rather close, I would say. Someone like you—someone who has no training or comprehension of anything but your own language, the one we are speaking right now—you would never be able to make any sense of these words. But _I_ have spent my whole life bent over documents as old as this, or even older, and so it is easier for me to know what it is that I am reading."

"So you _can_ translate it, then?"

"I believe so, yes, or at least as much as _can_ be translated. This English—English so old that it is no longer spoken anywhere in the world—it cannot be translated so easily as a language that is still alive. There will be some words that cannot be explained, for they simply no longer have any meaning in our world. But can I make the words make sense? Yes, I certainly believe so." The Librarian leaned back in his seat with a pleased smile stretching his face, so proud of his ability to turn nonsense into words so that Roxy could understand.

"How much time will that take?" she asked, looking down at the thick sheaf of parchment that still needed to be translated. "And how much would you be willing to work for? I'm just an intern, so I'm not exactly swimming in Galleons, but I have a good sum set away just in case, so—"

"Money? Who said I was doing this for money? My dear Miss Weasley, I don't translate pieces like this because of a need for finance. And especially not for someone like you—someone who is gifted, someone who is special. No, no, I won't give you a price, not on _this_ work!"

Roxy blinked at him, bewildered. She had spent the last seven years of her life surrounded by people who rarely, if ever, did anything for another person without expecting some sort of recompense. That lifestyle—that mentality—was comfortable to Roxy. It made _sense_ to her to do things on a favour-to-favour basis.

Doing things without expecting a return on it of some sort? That was simply unheard of.

"I have to pay you with something—money, labour? You can't just say—I mean, free of charge? That just makes no sense. And—" Roxy narrowed her eyes at the Librarian. "—what do you mean by being gifted? Gifted in what way, exactly?"

The Librarian smiled at her, holding his arms out, stretching them widely as if to say _you already know, Miss Weasley_. "You are cousin to Lucy Weasley, who has always seen the world for how it truly is. You are aunt to Faith Maccabee, who communicates with those whose voices cannot yet be heard. Why would they _not_ want you, Roxanne Weasley, who has lost father and brother, uncles and friends, all before the age of twenty? You, who will lose more in the years to come—of course they scream to get your attention! Of course they dance wildly in the hopes that you might see them! They are desperate that now—finally now—you would notice their presence."

Roxy shook her head, growing annoyed with his words. This was too many people now who were pressing her, insisting that she was somehow, in some way, important to these ghosts—who were a category of beings that Roxy was beginning to wish she had never even heard of.

How was it that all of these people could look at her and see something in Roxy that she had no comprehension of? What did they even _see_? Or at least, what did they _claim_ to see in her?

"I'm not anything special," she told the Librarian in a firm voice. "I'm just Roxy Weasley, one of a dozen Weasleys. I'm not special at all, so whatever it is you've heard about me simply isn't true. I'm just a potions intern, a kid. There's nothing special about me that warrants all of this attention."

Roxy waved a hand around the room, but it was more than just sitting on the Librarian's couch that bothered her.

It was all the strange behaviour from her cousin and niece—the cryptic messages, the feelings of paranoia that they left her with following every conversation. It was waking up in the wrong room every single morning with no memory of ever having moved. It was being sent on an endless hunt for information that didn't exist—information about _beings_ that no longer existed.

At that moment, Roxy knew she was done hunting for ghosts. She didn't care about them; she didn't care why they had disappeared, or where they had gone to. She didn't care that people thought it was appropriate to send her on ridiculous missions throughout Diagon Alley.

Roxy was done.

She could barely even remember why it was that she had started in the first place.

"I think I've changed my mind about having you translate anything for me," she told the Librarian, getting to her feet. "In fact, I think I've changed my mind about all this ghost nonsense. It's taken up far too much of my time, and I have so little to begin with, what with always being at work. So, er, thanks for offering to help, but I'll be going now. Sorry for wasting your time, sir."  
The Librarian only stared at her, back to his non-verbal means of communicating. And then he sighed, resting his hands on the old parchment. "You say that, Roxanne Weasley, without knowing the true consequences of your words. You will leave now, declaring that this is our last encounter ever, but to be so permanent, so certain, ah..." He shook his head. "To be young again and believe you know it all. What a life that was."  
"I'm not saying I know everything," said Roxy crossly. "Only that I've changed my mind about all this ghost crap. It doesn't interest me anymore. So I'll be leaving now, and you can put all of that back downstairs in your archives. Go back to being the creepy old mute man of Knockturn, with a collection of old writings and no one to talk to." The words were spoken more harshly than she had intended, but Roxy was angry—frustrated—by the circles she was running around in.

"They'll never leave you alone, Miss Weasley," the Librarian replied, still cheery, still pleasant—and it was this more than anything else that made Roxy know that she did not like this man. "They'll never let you forget they're here, not now that you've been made aware of the presence. Not now that you've so publicly rejected them. They only want help, Miss Weasley."

"And I've no desire to continue aiding in a doddering old man's lunacy, nor the faery-tale dreams of a woman who's barely holding onto her sanity. Thank you so very much for your kindness, sir, but I'm off now, and you may do with those papers as you like."

She headed to the door, not bothering to look back at the Librarian, wanting to erase him from her mind—him, and everything else that had happened graduation. Roxy hoped that, by leaving the Librarian and those dumb papers behind, everything would go back to normal. She was tired of it all—the confusing statements from the Librarian, the gaps in her memory. She just wanted it all to finally stop so that things would go back to normal.

"Are you sure that it is wise to turn your back on all of this, Miss Weasley?" the Librarian asked. For the first time, his voice was cold, with a sharp edge to it. He was no longer attempting to bring Roxy to his side, to convince her of his words—this was a warning, plain and simple.

She turned to face him again, scowling. "I want nothing to do with this any longer—you, or anyone else you're involved with, and none of this nonsense about ghosts coming back either. I'm done!" Her voice rose in pitch even as Roxy struggled to stay calm. "I hate having my entire life messed up for childish bullshit like this—I'm done, do you understand me? I'm done, I'm done, and if I don't get left alone soon, I'm going to snap! I'm going to go even crazier than I already am! Just—just leave me alone, will you? I don't care about any of this crap!"

The Librarian said nothing as Roxy threw the door open and stomped back into Knockturn, forgetting entirely about her hesitancy of the area earlier; in her anger and frustration, she could only think about getting home without blasting something into smithereens with her wand.

Roxy stormed her way through Knockturn, ignoring the leering grins and muttered taunts that were thrown at her from doorways and alleys. Her head was full of bubbling fury at the thought of everything that had happened to her since June—all the crap that she'd been forced to deal with because of Lucy—because of…

She paused on the edge of Knockturn, stopping just where the street sign that separated the creepier part of town from the more normal area of Diagon was located. Slipping into a little shop just a few metres away was her cousin Lily, who, just before disappearing inside, looked around suspiciously, as if Lily suspected someone had followed her.

What was her cousin doing in Diagon Alley? And why hadn't she contacted Roxy before coming into town; Lily _always_ owled Roxy whenever she was coming to Diagon so the two girls could either hang out together in order to look at all the shops, or meet up for a little while at the joke shop to chat about whatever came to mind. Lily had _never_ before stepped foot in Diagon Alley without first informing Roxy about. So why was she here now? Was it possible that her cousin was sneaking around because—because Lily didn't want Roxy to know something?

Her ex-boyfriend, Tolkien, lived in a flat somewhere along the main street of Diagon Alley; was it possible Lily had decided to visit him for some strange reason, and had chosen not to tell Roxy for fear that the younger girl would oppose the visit? Roxy would never say she was a big fan of Tolkien Smith, so she could understand why Lily might hesitate to come to her first—but the shop Lily had slipped into was nowhere near Tolkien's flat.

In fact, Roxy noted, peering at the storefront that her cousin had disappeared into, this whole excursion of Lily's was very interesting, not to mention at least a little concerning. Lily had gone into a rather well-known store—one that Roxy had visited with Leanne both times that her god-sister had discovered she was pregnant;

The little store was popular for selling contraceptive charms as well as pregnancy-detecting potions. But Lily didn't currently have a boyfriend for which contraceptives would be necessary, which meant that...which meant that...

She had so quickly—once again—forgotten about what had been happening to her just minutes before, at the Librarian's house, Roxy's attention shifting entirely to focus on her cousin, who was inside of a shop that was almost entirely occupied by pregnant women-or at least those who thought they might be. All thought of ghosts and spectres and weird papers fled from her mind at the flash of concern that something— _something_ —had happened to her cousin.

But what could she do? What could she say? Would it be wise to rush into the shop, to confront Lily and demand to know why she was in there, why she was here in Diagon Alley without telling Roxy first? Or would that only make Lily confrontational, or distressed, or perhaps deny everything in a fit of rage? Would Lily storm back out of the shop and tell Roxy to never talk to her again?

Would sneaking into that shop to see what her cousin was doing—would that destroy their whole friendship?

Roxy shook her head, perplexed, at a loss for what to do. She didn't want to risk upsetting Lily, but she was also concerned about the older girl, who had spent the past several years living so recklessly, so wildly. What if it wasn't a baby that led Lily to that store—because it wasn't just pregnancy potions that they dealt in. It was preventing diseases as well, or helping as best as could be done to cure them.

Who could possibly ever care about whether or not ghosts existed when their best friend was in a shop like that? Who could possibly stop to consider the importance of their existence to beings that probably no longer had any place in this world except in the minds of lunatics and dreamers? She had stopped caring about ghosts already—now, Roxy was forgetting that she had ever cared to begin with, too concerned about her cousin.

Roxy continued to stand under the sign that separated Diagon from Knockturn—separated the unknown from the unwanted—incapable of making up her mind about confronting Lily or not. But then a terrible thought entered her head—that if she hesitated too long, standing without thought or action—Lily would soon be back out on the street, and she would spot Roxy in an instant (who, with her wild curls, was anything but inconspicuous) and Lily would demand to know why her cousin was out here, watching the shops.

It was that thought that sent Roxy hurrying away, rushing down the street before Lily could return. Roxy knew it made probably made her look cowardly to some, to run off, but she thought this was honestly to smarter option to having her cousin start a row in the middle of wizarding London, where everywhere would watch and listen.

So she left, not even looking back, in case Lily was coming out at that moment; Roxy did not want to see that pale face or that flash of long, red Weasley hair watching her flee from the scene.

Roxy Weasley was a coward—maybe it was true, some would say, though she didn't _feel_ particularly cowardly—but she had endured enough confrontation and cryptic responses today already; getting the same from Lily would simply be too much to bear all at once. She did not want to hear her cousin cry out "Roxy, why are you here?"

 _And so she left._

* * *

Mum gave Roxy a puzzled look when the short girl came running up the stairs, slightly out of breath, with a light sheen of sweat breaking out across her forehead. Mum opened her mouth to ask _why_ Roxy had been running so hard, but the girl only waved her mother off with claims of a long, stressful day—which _was_ true—and a need to take a nap, to relax in silence by herself for a little while.

 _I just better wake up in my own bed for once,_ she thought to herself before flopping onto her mattress and quickly falling into a deep sleep.

* * *

In her dream, she is back out on the streets of Diagon Alley, but it is night time now, and she could barely see more than a metre in front of her face. Though it is very dark outside, the lamps that trail up and down the pavement are not lit; in fact, there are almost no lights at all, she noticed, not even from the storefronts. She realised that their insides were dim and abandoned, doors hanging wide open and the windows smashed.

Someone had trashed her home. The streets that she had grown up running through were now dirty and destroyed, a forgotten relic that everyone else had left behind for good. Roxy wasn't sure how she knew, but she was certain that there were no more people here, save her for and the creatures of the night, inhuman beasts that she wanted nothing to do with.

She could not stay here, out in the open, Roxy realised, and so began to walk at random; after a few steps though, her feet led her, almost by instinct, in the direction of the joke shop, of the flat that she had been born and raised in. As she drew closer, a wind picked up, howling fiercely at her as Roxy made her way through the dead streets of Diagon Alley.

There was someone standing on her street, she saw, turning the corner to face Witch's Way. A person—a real person—standing outside on the street, casually observing everything with a beaming smile that she could see even from the end of the street.

And then Roxy noticed the shop.

Or rather, she noticed the _absence_ of the shop. A big, gaping hole was all that remained of her father's livelihood, of her family home. It was filled to the brim with rubbish and debris, a pile of garbage where years of memories had once been built up. Roxy gave out a shocked cry, running down the street as fast as she could.

"Rox!" cried the person, making her stop suddenly.

It was her brother who stood there, right where their house was supposed to be. Roxy recognised him in an instant, because he hadn't aged a day since his accident since his—even now she could not say the word. But he was here and he was smiling at her, a smile that was so wide and bright and out of place amongst all this gloom and destruction. Roxy wanted to run to him, to hug him, but she was afraid to rush to Freddie and his grin.

 _Afraid? Of what?_ She asked herself, yet got no answer. _He's your brother. Your brother. He would never harm you. He would never do anything so why—why are you afraid of him? What is there to fear?_

She didn't know, she didn't know, but Freddie gave her the same uncertain chill that she had felt in the presence of the Librarian. It was the feeling of a force which was greater than herself. A force that was greater than anyone or anything that had ever lived. And it terrified her, this unknown force that lived— _but was it really living?_ —inside her brother.

"Rox!" he called to her in Freddie's voice, so deep and clear and happy to see her, like he wasn't dead, like he hadn't been dead for five years now and wasn't real and wasn't coming back. He was beaming, eyes glimmering cheerily, but Roxy could only gape at him, trying to match up the image of her nineteen year old brother with the destruction of their home.

He moved towards her, hand outstretched to grab her, but Roxy shifted away, moving further back so that he could not touch her. Freddie cocked his head, confused as Roxy continued to step back, shaking her head. This was not her brother. This was not Freddie; though he looked and sounded like Freddie, this was not him.

It simply could not be him.

"Rox, what's wrong? Aren't you happy to see me? Aren't you glad? I thought you missed me, Rox. I thought you would have been happy to see me again." His smile faded as he grew more and more confused, reaching out grab at her once more.

"Why are you here?" she demanded of him. "What happened to my home?"

Freddie's smile became sad, and he pointed into the rubble of their house, where bodies lay, strewn wildly. "Everyone's gone now, Rox. It's just you and me. Just you and me."

Lily…Mum…Leanne…their bodies, broken and bloodies, were tossed across the rubbish like they were nothing but scraps. She cried out, shocked and horrified, turning to look at the boy who was her brother, but was at the same time a complete stranger to her, an unknown danger.

"Aren't you glad to see me, Rox?" His smile had become menacing, bloody.

* * *

She woke with a start, and nearly screamed with frustration at the realisation that, once again, she had managed to find her way back into Freddie's bedroom.


	17. Bad news (bears)

Aunt Ginny invited Roxy over to the Potter house, writing a letter that claimed the two didn't spend enough time together anymore and that, after all, "us youngest need to stick together to keep the older kids from getting too cocky".

Roxy strongly suspected that Aunt Ginny—who was on the older side of her forties—was attempting to seem 'cooler' to the few remaining people who might look at her and see anything other than just a middle-aged Ginny Potter.

The fact that Roxy's mum spent the last few weeks encouraging Roxy to socialise—"and I mean outside of your job Roxanne! When's the last time you even _saw_ Lily?"—probably also factored into Aunt Ginny's sudden invitation. She didn't think it likely that her aunt suddenly felt a surge of familial love towards her youngest niece.

But Roxy _did_ feel like getting away from the flat for a little while, and if Lily was there, maybe Roxy would be able to confront her about what she had seen in Diagon Alley. Besides, she had always liked going to her aunt and uncle's house.

The Potter house was everything that her parents' flat could never be. Spacious, but not necessarily ostentatious, the house sprawled over a large expanse of land. Roxy had heard stories from Lily about friends who nervously approached the front door like they were about to face Voldemort himself. The front lawn was large, typically green, and well kept, with plenty of flowers wilting in the early winter chill; the back lawn was even bigger, allowing the house to almost rival the borders that made up the Burrow.

In all, the Potter house always seemed perfect to Roxy—someone, namely Uncle Harry, obviously was invest in the place enough to make sure it was always presentable and looked after—but her aunt's home still appeared to be _lived_ in, cared for, rather than forgotten and left to collect dust, like her own home, which had recently become a memorial to her father and brother.

Aunt Ginny stood in the doorway as Roxy made her way up the stone path, hoping no gnomes had recently decided to make their nest in the grass, or in a bush. Her aunt waved, giving Roxy a friendly smile; even from a distance, Roxy could see the tightened corners of her aunt's mouth as she struggled to remain happy, instead of letting her face relax into one of concern.

Her aunt was very pretty for a forty-seven year old, Roxy had to admit. Ginny had also once played Quidditch professionally—just like Mum—but had chosen to retire after learning she was pregnant with her second child at the age of twenty-four.

Now, she handled the Quidditch column for _The Daily Prophet_ , travelling across the country to interview players who were all still young and promising and talented—players who were, if Lily's stories were true, beginning to forget that Ginny had once been a part of their group, a part of their life, and now treated like any other reporter; with suspicion, acting aloof and disdainful, making acting questions difficult.

Apparently, twenty year old Quidditch players didn't care if they were talking to _the_ Ginny Potter; if she was asking them questions, their lips were sealed.

With long, red hair that was slowly turning grey at the roots, and a few extra kilos added on than had been there ten years ago, Aunt Ginny was a long ways off from the pictures that adorned Grandmum's house of a smiling, vibrant teenager. Standing in front of Roxy now, Ginny seemed to only be able to pull off looking over her niece with tired brown eyes, inviting the girl inside for a biscuit, perhaps, and a cup of tea.

"It _is_ nice to see you again Roxy," her aunt said pleasantly, leading the young girl into the kitchen and inviting her to sit down at the table. "You know, we have those dinners every single Sunday, but I never really leave feeling like I've honestly gotten to _talk_ to anyone. How sad is that?" Her laugh was just as forced as her smile; hands tremble ever so slightly as she prepared drinks.

"Rose and Al always talk well enough, don't they?" Roxy replied in an empty voice. She could not make herself pretend to be about excited about a heart-to-heart with her aunt. Roxy was not one for emotional conversations, dwelling on the past. Sentimentality—she had never quite understood it. "I mean, when they're talking to each other, that is. They _are_ talking to each other again, right?" She squinted at her aunt.

Ginny looked away briefly before nodding, but the slight pause was enough for Roxy to be able to determine the truth. Aunt Ginny didn't _know_ if her son and niece—her own goddaughter—were still having a big row. And if she didn't know, how could anyone really be certain of anything about those two? Was it possible that the dynamic duo was finally breaking up and drifting apart?

"The wedding planning has been hard on them both. I mean…" Aunt Ginny seemed to flounder for words, looking around her kitchen as if it would provide her an explanation. "It must rather fell like she's losing _both_ of her best friends at the same time."

"Losing them?" Roxy cocked her head thoughtfully, confused by her aunt's interesting choice of words.

"Marriage changes people," Aunt Ginny said carefully, and then let out a small, almost bitter laugh. "Mum told me that same thing after your Uncle Percy got married, because Audrey did a lot to change his character while they were engaged. I didn't really believe her at age twenty, but now look at me! Reciting the exact same words to my niece and finally recognising how true they really are."

Roxy still didn't quite understand. She had only really been to three weddings in her life—Victoire's, Leanne's, and Rose's—and those were the only people she had experience with from before marriage _and_ afterwards. None of them seemed any different now than before they had tied the knot, so maybe this was all just another weird thing that only made sense if you were an adult.

A _real_ adult, not like Roxy, who still felt she was more student than grown-up with a job and the expectations of others weighing her down.

Ginny shook her head. "It was different when Rose got married, of course. Hannai didn't really know any of us, and the marriage was a lot more sudden. No one really had _time_ to sit down and plan everything out, to get into lengthy arguments about colour schemes and seating plans. It all happened too quickly for anyone to say very much. That's not to say they're a bad match, Rose and Hannai, but it's just…different, I guess. Her best friends, though—they're marrying each other, they're creating a sort of relationship that she will never be allowed to be a part of, and that must be very hard on poor Rose. Though, of course, that doesn't excuse how she's been treating Albus, but one can sympathise with her, even just a little bit."

"I don't think I'd ever get married at all, if that's what it does to people. Maybe it'd be better to just stay single forever instead."

Aunt Ginny laughed. "I think nineteen might be just a _bit_ young to be swearing off the idea of marriage forever. Your friend, what's his name—"

"Kieran?"

"Yes, him. What if, a year or two from now, he asks you to marry him? If he sat you down at a nice restaurant and pulled out a ring and asked you to spend the rest of your life with him? What would you say to that?" Ginny raised an eyebrow at her youngest niece.

"I dunno." Roxy looked down at the table as her aunt handed over a cup of tea and slid the biscuit tin across the wooden top. "Kieran and I barely talk anymore. I mean, we rarely talked to begin with. We mostly—" She stopped, blushing when she remembered that this was her _aunt_ she was talking to. Ginny smirked. "But I don't think he's the ' _one_ ' or anything like that. I wouldn't want to marry him, that's for certain."

Roxy felt this to be very true. She had only seen Kieran in-person twice since graduation back in June, and exchanged letters with him less than a dozen times. Even when they first started dating—as cute as Kieran was, and as much as she liked being with him—Roxy knew their relationship wouldn't last very long.

And she was okay with that knowledge. It was fine to have a causal relationship for a while, to have fun with one person for a few months and then separate amicably once they were both satisfied. Roxy wasn't sure when that time would come, but she wouldn't be upset when they _did_ finally split for good.

"Roxy," her aunt started, reaching out her hand to grasp Roxy's, though the girl pulled away, confused by Ginny's tone. The older woman sounded worried, almost fretful—in fact, she had been acting very much _unlike_ the calm, confident Ginny Potter that Roxy had known her whole life. "Listen, I'm a bit worried about—"

The back door squeaked as it opened, and both females turned around to see Lily Potter strolling into the house; she looked up, mildly surprised, to see Roxy sitting at the kitchen table with her aunt, drinking a cup of tea and chatting.

"Hello Mum, Roxy. Didn't expect to see the two of you together." She set her bag down by the counter, but made no motion to join them at the table. "But since you're _here_ , Rox, I wanted to know if maybe we could go to my room and talk about something?" Lily raised an eyebrow at her younger cousin, who frowned, puzzled.

What could Lily possibly want to tell Roxy that couldn't be said in front of her mother? Unless—Lily was about to confess why she had been in Diagon Alley a few weeks ago, and didn't want Aunt Ginny to know that Lily thought she might be pregnant.

"Sure," Roxy said amicably, getting up from her seat. She turned to her aunt with a smile, hoping it didn't look as forced as her earlier smiles had felt. "It was nice talking to you, Aunt Ginny. I'll see you on Sunday?"

Aunt Ginny nodded, waving the two girls off as she took another sip of her tea. "Go have your little chat. I know how young girls are, always needing their privacy."

Lily rolled her eyes at her mum's words, but grabbed Roxy's wrist and pulled her upstairs, to where the three Potter children's bedrooms were located. Though James' and Albus' were both empty—the boys having moved out shortly after graduating—Lily's room was still in use, until she finally moved everything into her flat.

The redhead dropped into her desk seat, bouncing around nervously for a few seconds. Roxy gave her cousin a concerned glance, wondering where all of the sudden activity was coming from. Was Lily okay? _But why would she be, if she's about to announce to you that she's pregnant, or something along those lines? Why would she be okay?_

"Rox, what I'm about to tell you is super secret information that you can't divulge with _anyone_ else unless I give you permission to do so. This means you can't tell my parents, or your mum, or any of the cousins. Got it?"

Roxy nodded, unsure of what, exactly, she was getting herself into.

"So you know how Tolkien and I had been dating for several months before we broke it off, right?" Roxy nodded again. "Well, we weren't ever exactly, y'know, _abstinent_ , not even from the beginning. And, er, there might've been times where we were both too drunk or high or both to tell whether or not the spell had been performed correctly—or even at all. And I'd been missing my period a lot lately—not that my cycle's ever been particularly consistent, but I was skipping several months in a row—and it, er, turns out that I'm…I'm…"

"Pregnant?" Roxy asked. Lily gulped, nodding wildly. "How far along are you?"

"Nearly four months now. I took a potion a few weeks ago to confirm, and then went to a friend's that I felt I could trust. He works for the maternity ward at St Mungo's, and he looked me over, checked to make sure everything was okay….and…"

"And what?"

"He said it's too early to determine a gender, but he knows a birth date. It's probably gonna be late March or early April. Right when all the really good Quidditch matches are picking up. And I'm supposed to photograph some of them, but how can I do that if I'm the size of a whale, or worse, laid up in bed?"

"I dunno." Roxy's head spun, struggling to comprehend everything. Though she _had_ strongly suspected Lily was pregnant ever since seeing her in that little shop, it was still a bit of a shock to actually hear Lily confess it out loud. Her cousin was _pregnant._ Wild, party-girl, eccentric Lily Potter—pregnant at twenty. "Don't you think you ought to tell someone else about all of this, though? Like, someone who'll be able to help you ought with everything?"

Lily sighed, letting her head drop into her hands. "I don't know who to _tell_ ," she moaned loudly. "I mean, if I tell Mum and Dad, they'll blow up. Their precious little girl—knocked up like some common slag? And the—the papers! Oh, _fuck_ , it'll be in all the papers. I'll be a national disgrace. I'll be a warning to all the future teens of the world. 'Don't have sex or you'll get pregnant like that whorish Potter girl'. I'll be the laughingstock of the family. Grandmum might even disinherit me entirely out of shame!"

She stood up from her desk only to flop dramatically down onto her bed a few second later, letting out a large groan. Roxy might have giggled at Lily's rather childish behaviour if she wasn't herself so worried about what might happen to her cousin.

Roxy looked over at her cousin, wondering if she would be able to see a bump. If Lily was already almost four months along, she wouldn't be able to hide from her parents for too much longer—and even if Lily's stomach didn't get that big, it would be very hard to explain where a baby had suddenly come from.

"What're you going to do when it comes time to give birth?" she asked, which only made Lily groan once more in frustration. Obviously, her cousin had not gotten very far in her plan to conceal her pregnancy past panicking. "Aunt Ginny will notice soon enough, if she hasn't already. And you know how our family is about babies—it's like they can _smell_ any time a pregnant woman enters the room. You might as well tell them, like, this Sunday. Everyone all at once."

"Are you bloody insane? Do you know what Mum will do to me if I just drop something like this on her during family dinner time? No, I'd at least have to tell her beforehand."

"Okay, then do that and _then_ tell everyone else on Sunday. I can help announce it, if that makes things any easier on you." Roxy tried to smile. She was doing her best to be helpful, but Lily only shook her head and scowled.

"That won't work either. I mean, what if they start asking questions? What if someone tries to pressure me into—into getting back with Tolkien? Or—giving up the baby or something like that?" Lily's eyes widened. "Maybe I _should_ give up the baby. It's probably a bit, er, late for that muggle thingy—the, uh, whatever surgery, but maybe I could give it up for adoption after I give birth? What about that?" She looked hopefully over at Roxy, who murmured thoughtfully.

Would that be smartest, to give the baby away? Lily _was_ only twenty, all by herself, and a bit too wild for parenthood, at least for now. Maybe she would calm down by the time the baby came along, but Roxy had always thought that Lily was very invest in herself. She wasn't the sort to just give up everything for one person.

"You have to tell them at _some_ point, Lils. And I mean _before_ you're strapped to a bed at St Mungo's and screaming your lungs out. You've told me, and that's a great step, but now you have to tell your mum and dad as well—and everyone else as well."

"Why?" Lily sounded genuinely confused, hands covering her eyes to block out the light above her head. "Why?"

"Why do you have to tell them?"

"Yeah." The redhead sat up, letting her hands fall to the bed. Her fingers gripped at the sheets, bunching them tightly while her skin grew paler. "I mean, it'd only just be _my_ baby, right? It's not Mum's baby, or Dad's baby, or anyone else's baby, either. It's my baby, so shouldn't I be the one to make the decisions?" Her voice was strained.

"Have you told Tolkien yet?" Lily blinked at Roxy, eyes wide with panic and bewilderment at the notion of talking to her ex-boyfriend. "He's the _father_ , Lils. It's biologically half his—doesn't he deserve to know that he's going to have a kid in five months? Doesn't he deserve to know what happened when you two were dating, even if you aren't now? Even if you won't be when the baby is born?"

Lily shook her head, now brought to tears. She leaned forward, taking big, gasping breaths. Her chest was heaving and her pupils dilated at an alarming rate. Roxy moved to grab Lily, gripping her shoulders tightly and shaking the older girl. Roxy called out her cousin's name several times, but received no response.

Lily's eyes glazed over, and though she opened her mouth to speak, the redhead didn't seem aware of Roxy's presence anymore. She didn't seem aware of _anything_.

" _Two girls. Two little girls."_ Lily's voice was raspy, broken, and wet as tears continued to stream down her cheeks. " _They can see like no one else can—se the world for how it truly is. They can see the world as it ends in flames and as it ends in ice. Two little girls—and only they know the way out. We have to follow them. We have to follow them. We have to follow them._ "

Lily collapsed, falling forward onto the bed, her body convulsing, practically foaming at the mouth. Roxy turned to call out for her aunt, but Lily's hand suddenly raised up and hit Roxy across the face, smacking the younger girl hard enough to make her fall to the floor, tears springing to her eyes.

Roxy lifted a hand to her face, feeling the tender skin, and then looked over at Lily, who was twisting and shaking in her bed, body flopping around like a fish pulled from the water. Sweat soaked the edges of her shirt, and when Roxy tried to move closer once more, Lily let out a high-pitched scream, her voice breaking painfully.

There were footsteps storming up the staircase as a breeze picked up and swirled around the room, making Roxy's hair blow into her face. The door slammed shut mere seconds before Aunt Ginny was able to get inside, leaving the two young females locked inside.

"Roxy?" Aunt Ginny yelled, pounding against the door. "Roxy, what's going on? What are you two doing in there? Is Lily okay? _Roxy?!_ "

Lily wouldn't stop screaming, her long, red hair slapping against her face, eyes so wide and blank that she looked possessed. Roxy tried to move towards her cousin once more, but was thrown against the wall. She felt her arm snap, twisting into a useless mess that pointed in the wrong direction. Roxy might have started crying if she wasn't so shocked at everything that was happening in Lily's room.

" _They're waiting! They're waiting! We can't keep them waiting for too much longer! They're waiting, Roxy, they're waiting. Waiting for you. Waiting for the girls._ " Lily continued to scream; Roxy clapped her hands over her ears, but it did little to muffle the sound.

Just when she thought it had grown to be too much though, the wind died. Lily stopped shrieking, instead dropping to the floor like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Roxy began sobbing, curled into a ball. She couldn't understand what was happening.

"Roxy? Lily? Oh, Merlin, what happened?" her aunt demanded, bursting into the room to take in the sight of her unconscious daughter and shaking niece, surrounded by old textbooks and blank scraps of parchment. "What did you do? What did you _do_?"

* * *

 _3 November, 2028_

 _Rox,_

 _Sorry for everything that happened yesterday at my house. I'm still not sure what came over me, and I don't really remember anything that actually happened, but I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm so sorry—please, please forgive me?_

 _By the way, Mum knows now. She's allowed me to wait a little bit before we tell Dad or the rest of the Weasley bunch, but I can tell she's not at all happy with me. Dinner was very awkward, even with James there to break the tension ever so slightly._

 _(Did you know he finally broke up with that tart Camille? I'm really glad. They didn't belong together at all, am I right?)_

 _Anyway, I hope you feel better soon, and your arm doesn't hurt too much._

 _Love,_

 _Your favourite cousin Lily_

* * *

 _3 November, 2028_

 _Kieran,_

 _We need to talk. Please visit me at The Leaky Cauldron on the 5_ _th_ _at noon._

 _Roxy_

* * *

 _3 November, 2028_

 _Rox-_

 _Okay._

 _-Kieran_


	18. Break ups are a big deal

The Leaky Cauldron—owned and operated by Madame Hannah Longbottom for almost thirty years—had always felt like a safe haven to Roxy, having grown up on the streets of Diagon Alley. She had never cared that wandering into the pub would mean running the risk of catching the eye of a drunken fool; she enjoyed the warm smells and friendly smiles of the staff.

When she had been a very little girl, there was always a glass of milk and biscuits waiting for her, charmed to stay the perfect temperature whenever she should choose to drop by. When Roxy grew older, the milk was replaced—the Leaky was the first place she ever tried Butterbeer and Firewhiskey. It was where she went to learn the way of the world, picking up information from inebriated customers.

Growing up in Diagon Alley, Roxy had visited The Leaky Cauldron plenty of times. It had been her father's favourite place to go when he wasn't able to sleep; Roxy could remember being only eight or nine and helping her mum to bring Dad home after a long night.

It was also where her aunts and uncles met up with their friends to catch up about the past. Usually, this mean a lot of bragging and boasting about the old days from school, leading up to the Battle of Hogwarts. Victoire always insisted that the only reason the adults got as loud as they did was to avoid recalling all the friends who were no longer able to sit at the table with them. Roxy, never quite insightful like her eldest cousin, merely blamed the mass quantities of alcohol.

Another reason that made her like The Leaky Cauldron was because Madame Longbottom would always slip Hogwarts-age students a small Butterbeer if she wasn't particularly busy, without charging them or questioning why they would _want_ a drink in the first place, like normal adults; and it was nice to see Professor Longbottom, who helped serve drinks over the summer, when he wasn't locked away upstairs, tending to his plants.

The only downside was that—according to the rumours, anyway—Matilda Longbottom was still living in the flat above the Leaky. It was something that Roxy would have mocked the Ravenclaw girl for, if she wasn't also stuck at home with no plan or hope of moving out anytime soon.

Roxy didn't really have the energy or patience to deal with Matilda, so she hoped that if the other girl came around while Roxy was here, the Ravenclaw would have enough common sense to stay far away from Roxy and Kieran as long as their little chat took, which, if things went according to plan, shouldn't be too incredibly long.

She didn't necessarily want their meeting to stretch out any more than was necessary, in case things got awkward. Roxy wasn't much for dramatics or hysterics, but she had also never broken up with anyone before. There was no telling how things would end up going.

What if she cried? Or worse—what if Kieran cried? How would she be able to response if he begged her to stay together, or demanded a reason why?

But that was silly, Roxy told herself as she sat down at the same booth where she and Kieran had first met, back before either of them were even old enough to attend Hogwarts. Kieran liked to call it 'their booth' on those rare occasioning he felt like buying into sentimentalist, lovey-dovey crap; oxy suspected that she wouldn't be sitting in 'their booth' after today.

Maybe it hadn't been the smartest idea to pick a place with so many memories to break up in, but Roxy was hoping that one barely-ever-there ex-boyfriend wouldn't tarnish The Leaky Cauldron forever. She sighed, settling heavily into her seat, and took in a deep breath, inhaling all the scents that made up the Leaky Cauldron.

Immediately, she felt much calmer.

Here at the Leaky, it was like coming home all over again, in a strange way. Roxy knew every nick in the wood, every creak of the stairs. She could point out which chairs were newer, having been magicked back together after a particularly nasty bar fight. There wasn't a spot that she hadn't committed to memory over the years.

With a groan, Roxy shifted positions, scowling when her arm hit the side of the table and sent a spark of pain running through her body.

Though she had suffered very little permanent damage—beyond the memory of her cousin's outburst, which Roxy didn't think she would ever forget—she had come out of the situation relatively well, if just the slightest bit worse for wear. Her arm, the one that had been broken, tingled ever so slightly whenever she used it too frequently, and so Roxy had been struggling the past few days to do more things with her left hand, to avoid hurting her right.

One of the waiters—a new boy who looked barely sixteen, complete with pimples and an awkward smile—headed over to ask if she wanted anything off of the menu. Roxy recognised him as a Hufflepuff a few years younger than herself who had dropped out at the end of the year for "personal reasons", which had really just meant that years of mental issues had made attending Hogwarts nearly impossible.

Roxy offered him an easy-going nod, and ordered a Butterbeer and a ham sandwich, hoping the meal wouldn't take so long to make that she and Kieran were already broken up by the time it came out. But a glance around The Leaky revealed it to be relatively empty, and a sandwich didn't take terrible long to prepare.

"Just—" she grabbed the boy's sleeve, feeling that she ought to say something more to him, yet not knowing what she would even say. Roxy didn't even know this guy's name, let alone feel the slightest bit comfortable how he was doing now, outside of Hogwarts.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he asked, tilting his head. "You look kinda pink-ish. D'you need a glass o' water or somethin'?"

She shook her head, embarrassed. "No, sorry." Her cheeks burned a variation of that the familiar Weasley flush. "Can you just, uh, hurry a bit with my sandwich? I'm just in a little bit of a rush. I—I mean, if you don't mind?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," the boy mumbled, pulling his sleeve from her grip to stumble back towards the kitchen. He looked over his should at her with a puzzled glance before slipping away behind the swinging door that separated the main room from the sounds of Madame Longbottom ordering the staff around.

Roxy, to pass the time, pulled the letters that she had received earlier that morning from her pocket; they had arrived via an unfamiliar tawny owl, and though all three were addressed to her, they were not signed, and she could not even _begin_ to guess at who might have wrote them.

The very first one was short and informal, simply reading _Watch out for those who wish to bring you harm. Not all those who claim to want the best for you truly have entirely pure motivations. And not all those who claim to want the return of the ghosts intend to do well by our world by bringing them back. Be wary, be alert. Remember, constant vigilance, Roxanne Weasley._

The second letter was much longer—nearly two pages of parchment—and was written in a completely different form of handwriting.

 _Miss Weasley,_

 _I know you have approached the one they call 'The Librarian' concerning the possibility of ghosts having returned to our realm of existence. I also know that you have spoken to your older cousins, Lucy Weasley and Albus Potter, about this. Nothing you do is secret. Nothing you say goes unnoticed. I—and many others—are watching you, Miss Weasley. Some of those people may mean you harm. Some of those people may mean the_ world _harm. Make sure you know who your friends are—even amongst family, there is no guarantee that the bonds of blood will go far enough to keep you from getting hurt, or worse. If you find it becoming too easy to trust those around you, then beware! You have already fallen into their trap, and it is only a matter of time before you will find yourself in a hole too far to climb out of—a hole that you might have built for yourself. This letter is not meant to scare you, but is merely a warning to stay on alert as often as you can. I, and those that I work with, are your friends, Miss Weasley. We wish only to help you, and to help the rest of the world, both wizard and muggle. We desire to see the ghosts return to this world, but not at the expense of the living. We desire to see things be returned to the natural order, but it is those who are still of this world who are our primary concern. If this mission—and those who work towards its completion—are found to be on the wrong side of mankind, we will be forced to cut all ties. Permanently. You're a smart girl, Miss Weasley. You know what that will mean for you, or for your family. Do not trust anyone, even yourself. There are forces beyond our control, beyond our understanding, that will do their absolute best to confuse and befuddle you in order to turn you to their side. They will turn your own mind against you, if they find you to be an easy and willing victim. Do not let them find this to be true. You are too important, of an asset Miss Weasley, to lose so easily._

 _Constant vigilance, Roxanne Weasley. They are out there._

"Sandwich an' Butterbeer?" Roxy jumped, startled at the sudden presence of the waiter, who stood over her with a tray in his hands. She could see that the whole thing trembled as he struggled to keep the drink from falling over. "Got i' ou' quick, didn' I?" The boy smiled at her, pleased with himself.

"Y-yes, thank you," she replied shakily, taking the sandwich and drink from him. The boy gave her another curious glance, eyes narrowing in concern, but Roxy merely pressed a Galleon into his hand, hoping that would be enough to avoid any awkward questions. "You were very fast. I appreciate that."

"I do wha' people ask me ta," he said, turning sheepish at her praise. The boy—whose name she still could not place—tried to push the Galleon back into her palm, but she only shook her head.

"You deserve it for getting my food out quickly," explained Roxy, making the boy turn bright red before running back towards the kitchen once again. Roxy took a long sip from the bottle of Butterbeer before setting it on the table and turning to the third letter.

Before she could open it, though, the front doors to the pub opened, blowing a heavy wind that made her shiver. Roxy looked up to see Kieran strolling through the front doors of The Leaky Cauldron, hands in his pockets and smiling slightly to himself.

She sighed, grabbed the bottle from the table, and swallowed what remained in one, long gulp, ignoring the burning feeling that coursed through her throat. _Liquid courage,_ her uncle Charlie used to call alcohol, and that was exactly what Roxy needed if she was going to break up with Kieran today.

Kieran casually strolled over to the other side of the pub; a few people called out to him as he made his way through the pub, and he responded politely enough, but upon catching Roxy's eye, chose to hurry over to where she was sitting rather than continue socialising.

"Hey Rox," said Kieran, sliding into the booth across from her. "Haven't seen you in a while. Work been good?"

She shrugged, non-committal. To be honest, Roxy felt herself losing track of her work schedule, often owling in sick; when she _was_ at work, Roxy felt distracted and disoriented, like she wasn't really there, but was merely watching herself do basic tasks from a distance. That wasn't to say that work wasn't interesting, or that she didn't like it, but there were days where she would head home with no recollection of having arrived that morning, let alone what she had done all day.

"Work's okay. It certainly pays well enough-maybe even enough to be able to set out on my own by the end of the year. At least," she said with another shrug, "that's my goal. Living at home might be free, but I think I'm ready to move out for good."

"Ah, yeah," agreed Kieran cheerily. "I understand the sentiment. Having the parental units always watching you like you're a little kid, asking you what you plan on doing with your life, when are you going to get your own place, when are you going to get serious about everything? You know, Mum's already trying to push me into asking you to get married?"

"Married?" Roxy echoed incredulously. How shocked would Mrs Kanallakan be when Kieran home tonight to tell him that-rather than marriage-her son had instead broken up with his girlfriend? "Why on earth would she think that you and I should get married _now_? We're barely out of Hogwarts, we're only nineteen years old, and it's not like-" She broke off, looking down at the table shame-facedly.

Kieran tilted his head, puzzled, and leaned in to pat her hand. "What, Rox? Not like what? Is something going on that I need to know? Are you okay?" He seemed so innocent and sweet that Roxy hated herself for even _thinking_ about breaking up with him.

 _But you have to, don't you?_ she reminded herself harshly. _You have to break up with him, because you know you don't love him, and staying in a relationship that you don't really mean is never the right thing to do. You'd only be lying to yourself, and worse, you'd be lying to Kieran._

Roxy knew now was the best time to tell him, before Kieran started to seriously consider what his mum was suggesting about them. Better to break it off now than to have this conversation six months down the road, when the next time might be when Kieran was down on one knee and proposing to her.

She didn't want to do that to Kieran, who had only ever been nice to her, and who was her friend before anything else.

"Listen, Kieran, there's something we need to talk about," Roxy said, nerves making her voice squeak horribly.

"Hm?" Kieran had slid the ham sandwich across the table while she was thinking, and was now taking a large bite of it. With food in his mouth, he mumbled, "Y'know, Mad'me Longbottom alfways makes really grea' san'wiches. Sor'a makes me wish she was my mum so I'd alfways ge' goo', home-cooked meals efery day, 'stead of fro' a house-elf."

"Kieran, will you please listen to me?" Roxy almost whined because she wanted to end this conversation so badly. He looked up at her, alarm flashing across his face and worry pulling down at the corners of his mouth.

He took a big gulp of food. "Rox? You didn't invite me out for just a chat and a sandwich, did you? This—this is ' _the talk'_ , isn't it? About how it "isn't me, it's you, we never would have worked out" and all that other crap that people say when what they really mean is that they're done with the relationship, done with you, and want to move on? Is that what this is?"

She nodded weakly, glad she hadn't had to actually say the words out loud herself.

"So you're breaking up with me?" Kieran frowned, not looking particularly upset; he seemed more puzzled than anything, as though he could not figure out _why_ Roxy would even want break up with him. "Did I do something wrong?"

This was the part she hadn't been looking forward to at all. Taking a deep breath-and sorely wishing she hadn't downed her entire drink already-Roxy shook her head. "No, it's not...it's not so much anything you _did_. I mean, we've been dating since, what, January?"

He nodded.

"And how many dates have we gone on? How often do we hold hands? Hell, when's the last time we actually saw each other in-person? And, yeah, I know neither of us are particularly romantic people but come on, Kieran. This is barely even a relationship in anything but name. You didn't even give me a present for my _birthday_."

He at least had the decency to look sheepish. "Er, well, you know I was really busy in September, and you've been swamped too with your job and everything, so I thought it would be best to just leave you alone for the day and let you catch up on everything and..."

"You forgot it was even my birthday and by the time you remembered, you were too embarrassed to admit it and instead chose to never send anything at all, not even a note."

"Yeahhh." He hung his head in shame. "I've never been good at relationships though, you know that. I mean, how many girls have you seen break up with me over the years because I never caught on when they wanted something? Hell, I only knew you had ever even liked me after you kissed me for the first time."

"I'm sorry, Kieran."

"I think..." he looked down at the sandwich, forgotten on the table between them. "I think I ought to go home now, Rox. I mean, my mum's probably waiting for me, and, uh, you know, I've been really busy lately so—so I should head home and get caught up."

"That's a good idea," she replied, feeling empty inside. Roxy didn't _think_ she was going to start crying, but breaking up with Kieran certainly hurt a lot more than she was expecting it to. "I should probably go home as well. But…" she trailed off, uncertain. "We can still be friends, right?"

He turned red, but nodded. "Yeah. Friends."

They both stood up, and Kieran moved in as if to hug Roxy, but then stopped, blinking confusedly and turning an even darker shade of scarlet. Roxy only shrugged, not certain of the protocol surrounding saying good-bye to a boy you just broke up with.

"See you around, I guess?" he muttered.

She tilted her head agreeably. "See you."

And with that, they both departed The Leaky Cauldron, which, strangely, no longer felt quite as friendly as it had when they first came in.

* * *

Greg stopped by the table where the black girl had been sitting with her boyfriend. Or, rather, ex-boyfriend, since they had apparently broken up in the middle of their conversation. Greg hoped that this wouldn't all somehow circle back to being blamed on him. As the youngest employee at The Leaky Cauldron-and the first to admit that he wasn't the smartest person around—Greg was often blamed for any and every little thing that went wrong at the pub.

There was a small stack of parchment still sitting on the table, along with a half-eaten sandwich and an empty bottle of Butterbeer.

Greg paused, fingers hovering over the parchment, unsure of what he was supposed to do with it. The paper itself was thick and very heavy; the handwriting was fancy-that, what was it called? The loopy, pretty handwriting that his mother would write in when she didn't want Greg to know what she was saying about him. Cursive, he remembered after a moment's thought. The letter was written in cursive, which Greg couldn't read because—according to Mum and everyone else, and part of the reason he had been pulled out of Hogwarts—he was too stupid and foolish to ever understand anything much more than what a child could figure out.

Greg scanned the letter, making out a few discernible words amongst the looping, sprawling letters that scam before his eyes.

 _Roxy...danger...coming back...don't...how are we...can't stop...have to...work with me...crazy...trust me...you're in danger...hurry...constant vigilance..._

The letter wasn't signed, and from what Greg could make out, it mostly appeared to be several pages full of the sorts of ramblings that could only come from someone who was even less in the right state of mind than he was. Was it just pure gibberish, and that was why the girl had left it here? Or did the words make sense to her—and what if she got home and realised her letter was missing?

He looked around The Leaky wildly, hoping to see the short girl from earlier come stomping through the doors to demand to know just _what_ he thought he was doing, and to insist that he give the letter back _right now_. But what if she got mad or insisted that she would have him punished?

Greg didn't want to be fired from The Leaky Cauldron; as often as he was yelled at, Greg actually rather _liked_ working here. Miss Longbottom was nice to him, and even when she got annoyed, she was a lot nicer about it than Mum was. He didn't want to lose his job if the girl came back angry.

"Oi Greg!" called one of the older boys who also served as a waiter and a server, and who scrubbed plates and cleaned up the trash and did everything that Miss Longbottom told him to do, unless she wasn't around, in which case, he simply bossed Greg around instead.

Greg didn't much like the older boys who worked at The Leaky; they were bigger and older and smarter than he was; because of this, they thought it was okay to bully him all of the time.

"What d'you want, Lars?" he asked, feeling tired all of the sudden. Greg didn't even notice that he had snatched the parchment up from the table, nor did he notice himself folding it in half and slipping the stack into the pocket of his robes. When he looked down at the table, Greg had already mostly forgotten the papers even existed.

"C'mon, dimwad, Coops dropped a bunch of beer all over the place an' we need someone to mop it up." Lars grinned at Greg, showing all his teeth, which Greg knew meant Lars and Coop had _intentionally_ dropped the beer, to get Greg in trouble and give him more work to do.

With a sigh, he headed into the kitchen, all thought of the paper gone from his thoughts. He had a floor to clean.


	19. When you're a Weasley

There were times when Roxy honestly hated being part of the Weasley family; they were all so invasive and no one understood the concept of privacy. Anytime something happened to one member of the family, everyone else figured it out and spread the news to those who didn't know, all without ever asking if it was okay to share what should have been personal information!

Such as when Roxy had started dating Kieran—within a week, she had received letters from her three paternal uncles, all explaining that they'd happily beat Kieran up if he ever did anything impolite to her.

Roxy had been so embarrassed reading those letters at the Slytherin table, and though Kieran had laughed good-naturedly, it had made her flush so red that the rest of Roxy's Slytherin classmates started making jokes about her being a 'true Gryffindor' on the inside.

After all, they were a family of famous war heroes, including several high-ranking Ministry officials.  
And though her cousins, uncles, and aunts all insisted that they were just looking out for her—like they would any member of the family—Roxy highly suspected it was because she was the youngest of the bunch; not to mention, they all seemed to be waiting for the day she finally had her big meltdown and admitted to being broken up inside with grief because of her father and brother's death, as though Roxy hadn't already made it clear a thousand times that, while upsetting, she wasn't a naturally emotional person, and therefore was not going to break down crying in front of everyone at dinner.

But her family was so invasive! Roxy sometimes wished she wasn't just another Weasley, if only to be left alone for a while.

 _This_ was one of those times.

The female Weasley cousins were all sitting in the sitting room—and kitchen and dining area—of Molly's flat, continuing their usual tradition of having a "girls' weekend" as often as they could, each time changing whose house they grouped up at.

Roxy thought the whole practice was cheesy and unnecessary for a family as close as theirs, but Lily and Lucy had shown up at her home and dragged Roxy over to Molly's, despite her protests that she would _honestly_ rather stay at home finish the research that needed to be completed for work the next day.

"You _can't_ stay home, not now!" her cousins insisted as they appeared outside of Molly's flat with a pop. "Not just after a break up! You need to spend time with friends to help get over him, and that's what cousins are for."

And so, Roxy now found herself resting on the floor of Molly's sitting room, while Lucy braided her hair and the other girls made sympathetic noises about the general terribleness of the male population; Roxy told herself that if they started reciting clichéd phrases about being "better off without him", she would hex the five cousins and leave immediately.

"Tell me it didn't hurt _too_ badly, Rox," begged Molly in a voice that was coated in sympathy. Molly, who was both the second oldest female cousin _and_ the second oldest overall, had been a Hufflepuff during her time at Hogwarts, and as she grew older, had adopted an overly maternal attitude towards all of her younger cousins, talking to them as though they were still little kids, especially Roxy, who everyone apparently still saw as an eleven year old. "Tell me he hasn't left your heart shattered into a million pieces for the rest of your life, never to be able to properly trust or love anyone ever again."

Molly was also a bit of a drama queen sometimes.

"Nobody cried or had their heart broken," Roxy replied, rolling her eyes. Were break ups _supposed_ to be dramatic and messy? Roxy though she would rather just not date at all, if that was the case. "All that happened was that I broke up with Kieran, and he asked me why, then afterwards, we agreed to stay friends and parted ways."

"What?" her cousins shrieked; they all stopped what they were doing and turned to gawk at Roxy. Even Lucy let go of Roxy's unfinished braids, which quickly escaped their hair ties to return to their normal, wild and curly state.

"So you just broke up with him? Just like that?" asked Lily incredulously, shaking her head in confusion. "Just _hey, I don't like you anymore, we're done_? How do you make these sorts of things seem so easy? I mean, even _I_ cried when I broke up with Tolkien, and by the end of our relationship, I couldn't _stand_ him anymore. But you? I mean, you and Kieran were dating for almost ten months and now he just, what, means nothing to you?"

"I never said he means nothing to me. We'll still be friends and hang out sometimes," Roxy explained. "And it wasn't exactly what I would call ' _easy_ '. I still like Kieran…I just don't want to be with him anymore, you know? At least not in a romantic sense."

"I'm sorry, did you just try to say that you still want to be _friends_ with your _ex-boyfriend_? Are you crazy?" Victoire flipped her long, blonde hair over her shoulder, looking nearly indignant at Roxy's statement. "What if he gets a new girlfriend? What if you get a new boyfriend? Do you honestly expect either of those people to tolerate knowing that their significant other still hangs out with someone that they used to date?"

"Kieran is still friends with all of his exes, and I never minded that he talked to them or went to parties and Quidditch matches with them," Roxy replied defensively, a little insulted at Victoire's outrage.

Mum had reacted the same way when Roxy told her about breaking up with Kieran, assuming that this meant they would most likely never speak to each other again except for those times they might accidentally cross paths in Diagon Alley.

Even Jo had seemed a little incredulous to hear that they would not be avoiding each other from now on. Roxy couldn't understand why everyone was acting so shocked that she still wanted to be friends with a boy who had been one of her best friends _before_ he had been her boyfriend.

Victoire and Molly exchanged looks of disbelief before simultaneously shaking their heads at what they perceived to be their youngest cousin's infinite ignorance of the way the world worked. The idea that exes could ever remain friends seemed hopelessly, naively impossible at best, and a complete disregard for social expectations at worse.

But what did Roxy know about these things? After all, this was only her first boyfriend, and therefore her first ever break up. She would realise the truth soon enough—she and Kieran could never truly be friends again, and it was unrealistic to think anything else. Almost childish, Victoire and Molly agreed, but what more could expect from a nineteen year old?

Roxy only shrugged, hoping she didn't look particularly concerned about whether or not her cousins though she was crazy.

Victoire might have dated half a dozen boys throughout Hogwarts before she finally settled and married Teddy, but that didn't make her an expert on dating. After all, Victoire spent most of her time now working, and when she wasn't at work, she was taking care of Remy and Will. All of her old friends from school had long ago moved on and drifted apart.

And the same could be said of Molly, who hadn't dated during her time at Hogwarts, and now spent the majority of her days behind a wall of paperwork at the Ministry, and exclusively dating the same guy that she had been seeing for the past nine years, but wouldn't commit to, much to her parents' frustration.

Even _Rose_ was now married! Lily was a serial dater who dropped boyfriends like it would make her physically ill to stay with any one boy for too long. Lucy had once dated a boy named Luke—who dumped her after she admitted to him that she was pregnant—but he was the only partner she had ever had.

What did they know about dating? About being friends with people you used to date? It wasn't even like Roxy had slept with Kieran before they broke up— _that_ might have made things weird, but Kieran was the sort who believed in waiting until marriage and Roxy wasn't particularly eager to step into _that_ portion of a relationship just yet.

"I really just don't see the issue here," retorted Roxy. "If we don't work out as friends, then we just don't work. But that doesn't mean I'm not even going to _try_ to stay friends, like we were before. I do understand that things won't be the same as they once were, but I'm not just going to ditch Kieran forever because I used to date him. That's honestly really immature, in my opinion."

"Roxy gets a lot of interesting words of wisdom from her ghostly friends, don't you think?" asked Lucy airily, leaning in once more to continue braiding Roxy's hair; this prevented Roxy from twisting around to see Lucy's face, but the older cousins were all shaking their heads and mumbling quietly to each other about how strange Lucy was, while trying to avoid being heard by the short brunette, in case Lucy got upset and began crying, like she used to when people talked about her.

"Whatever do you mean, Lucy dear?" asked Molly politely, giving her sister a forced smile.

Lucy didn't seem to notice how fake Molly's expression was, smiling back at her older sister serenely, and her fingers were still intertwined in Roxy's curls as she spoke. "The ghosts," she repeated, as if it were obvious. "Roxy's been taking their advice again, though I wouldn't necessarily say it's all the sort of stuff one _ought_ to listen to. But I guess they are the ones who told her to break things off with Kieran, so really, how bad can their advice be?"

"Riiiiiight," Lily drawled, while Molly and Vic rolled their eyes at each other. "So ghosts—beings that literally _everyone else_ who isn't gullible or a child—are going around and the one thing they chose to do with their time was convince Roxy to break up with her boyfriend? Because they, what, don't have anything better to do? Yes, that _definitely_ makes sense, Lucy."

The brunette paused once more, letting go of Roxy's hair for the second time, and turned to look at Lily, tears forming at the corner of her eyes.

" _Really_ , Lily?" Molly hissed, moving to smack Lily's arm, but the younger girl only scooted out of reach and defensively replied that it wasn't as though the _rest_ of them weren't actively mocking Lucy as well.

"You make fun of your own sister all the time, Molly. I'm just the only one here brave enough to say it to her face." Lily turned to look at Lucy, who was now shaking slightly, her skin going white, and beads of sweat forming across her forehead. "Look, Lu, it was okay when we were little kids to pretend like your obsession with ghosts and that sort of crap was normal, but you're twenty-three now, and it's just weird. There are no ghosts whispering into Roxy's ears. They don't talk to you either. They don't _exist_ anymore, understand?"

Lucy shook her head, mouth opening and closing like a fish as she struggled to find the words to explain herself. Molly moved to comfort her sister, but the younger girl glared up at Molly, who backed away, settling down next to Victoire once more.

"If they aren't real, then who told me that you're pregnant?" Lucy demanded. The others gasped while Lily turned scarlet and began protesting that Lucy couldn't prove anything. "Who told me that you're going to have a baby girl next April, and that you've known for almost two weeks, but haven't said anything because you're afraid your parents will disown you?"

"Roxy must've told you!" Lily yelled, turning on her youngest cousin, who could only shake her head incredulously and explain that she _hadn't_ told anyone, since Lily told her specifically _not to_. "Well, you must've told her anyway! How else would she know? I hadn't even told Tolkien yet!"

"They told me! They told me, because they're _real, they're real, and I don't understand WHY NO ONE EVER BELIEVES ME!_ " Lucy was well and truly sobbing now. "And you've even heard them, too. They talked to you, and they've talked to Roxy—but no one ever believes me! Everyone thinks I'm crazy. Everyone looks at me and says _Oh look, it's Lucy Weasley. Isn't it funny how mad she is? Isn't it funny that her sister's so normal, but she's gone completely batty?_ Don't think I can't hear it just because you whisper and cover your mouth every time you mock me! I know what you say!"

Molly shot up once more, this time wrapping her arms around Lucy's chest and tugging the girl away; the shorter brunette looked ready to launch herself at Lily, but Molly only held her sister tightly and murmured softly in Lucy's ear.

The other girls couldn't help but stare; all Roxy's life, she had known there was _something_ wrong with Lucy, and she had seen Aunt Audrey or Uncle Percy do this exact same thing to calm Lucy down when she went into a fit, but it was weird to watch Molly hold onto Lucy and bring her sister back to reality like it was nothing.

She looked around the room, feeling awkward, and caught Rose's eye. The older girl tilted her head towards the direction of the kitchen table, and the two cousins stood up, silently separating from the group, which was now a mixture of confusion, apprehension, and uncomfortableness as Lucy continued screaming at Lily, who only continued to roll her eyes and repeat over and over that _someone_ had to admit the truth to Lucy eventually, so why not her, and why not now?

"Lil's kind of a bitch, isn't she?" muttered Rose, settling down on Molly's hard wooden stool. "Poor Lu. She's always been a bit wrong though, hasn't she—doesn't give Lil the right to tell her off, I mean, but you can understand the sentiment, can't you?"

Roxy shook her head. The sudden outburst from both Lucy and Lily caught her by surprise; there was clearly an air of barely stitched close resentment between the two girls that Roxy couldn't understand. "She shouldn't have said that. Lily, I mean. It was rude."

Rose looked Roxy over beadily. "Is she really…?"

"Pregnant?"

Rose nodded.

"Yeah. Almost four months gone, actually. Not sure how she didn't recognise it earlier—" Rose opened her mouth, and Roxy, anticipating a lecture on the statistics of women who went lengths of their pregnancies without ever realising, waved her hand impatiently. "Anyway, the real question here is who _did_ tell Lucy about it?"

"So it _wasn't_ you?" Rose asked sceptically.

"Why would it be? Lily's one of my best friends, and if she tells me not to say something, I'm not going to betray her trust. I mean, I assumed she was just going to talk about it at the next family dinner, like usual, so what would be the point in announcing it early?"

"Lily doesn't know the gender yet, does she?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Or a date of birth, either. So either Lucy's making that part up, or…"

"Or someone else really _did_ tell her about the baby." Rose's eyes widened at the idea, and Roxy remaindered herself that it _sounded_ preposterous because it _was_ preposterous. Rose cleared her throat, mumbling something about Lucy always being able to predict things before they happened, which made Roxy confused.

"Sorry, what?"

"Oh, right, you probably don't remember that. See, Lu was only barely three when you were born, right? And she hadn't started off on this whole ' _oh ghosts are real_ ' stuff, but even then, it seemed like she would talk to people who weren't really there. Like, this one time, she was sitting on Gran's couch by herself, and Aunt Ange walks in, yeah? So Lucy turns to your mum and says ' _it's gonna be a girl, Aunty. A girl in September._ ' Well, that freaked your mum out something awful, because she hadn't even known she was pregnant yet."

Roxy looked back towards the sitting room incredulously, trying to imagine her cousin predicting Roxy's birth before anyone else even know about it.

"And another time, she kept insisting to Gran that someone needed to owl Uncle Charlie—you might not remember that, you weren't even five yet when he passed, but I remember it, how unsettled Gran looked, because Lu kept on saying something had happened to Uncle Charlie. And then it turned out that one of the dragons escaped and killed Uncle Charlie and another handler? I never thought Gran could be turned away from a child, but for months after, she barely wanted to be in the same room as Lucy."

"She predicted Uncle Charlie's death?" Roxy echoed. Rose was right in saying that Roxy didn't remember any of that. She had been a very little girl when their uncle passed away—too young, even, to understand when Mummy and Daddy forced her to get dressed up for what they called a "funeral". Too young to understand that this meant Uncle Charlie wouldn't be coming home for Christmas, like he'd promised.

"Yeah, and other things, too. She seemed to know which house each of us would get sorted into before we'd even been accepted yet. Lucy predicted the exact date of Vic and Teddy's wedding a full two months before they even got engaged. She was the one who woke up everyone to tell them that Dominique was gone—though Lucy ended up being a bit off about that. If you ask her now," Rose's voice dropped as she leaned in towards Roxy. "She'll insist that Domi's still alive somewhere, even though we found her body, you know."

 _Dominique_. The cousin that should have been here—they had found her body in the Thames River six years ago, five months after she sprinted away from the Burrow on the night of her nineteenth birthday, for reasons that even now, no one could fathom. Aunt Fleur cried for days after her body was recovered; Victoire battled between blaming herself for once again overshadowing her sister and getting angry at Dominique for upsetting her parents.

But what did it matter? Dominique was dead—same as Uncle Charlie, Dad, and Freddie. They were never coming back, except for in dreams, no matter what Lucy said. Because Lily was right, only gullible people and children believed in ghosts, didn't they?

"What d'you suppose Lu meant by 'Lily talked to the ghosts, too' nonsense? Or is that just something she made up to piss Lils off? Wouldn't surprise me, to be honest—they've always wound each other up, for some reason. I couldn't tell you why, but there's always been something about Lucy that seems to set Lily off, and vice versa." Rose shrugged. "But that crap about Lily talking to ghosts? Or you, as well?"

Roxy turned away, remembering the incident in Lily's room, when the redhead grew pale as death and began chanting incoherently. She ran her fingers up and down the bruises that still covered her arm, wondering if, perhaps, there was something more than just fright and anxiety that caused Lily to lash out the way she did.

Because normal people didn't react like Lily, did they? _No, what she did wasn't right. It was almost like she was possessed._ Possessed? Roxy shook her head at the thought. Where had that come from? Everyone knew that 'possession' was just a silly muggle movie thing that didn't really happen.

The closest anyone ever got to achieving possession was the Dark Lord, back in the 1990s—at least, according to the History of Magic textbook, which also claimed that her Uncle Harry and Aunt Hermione were rumoured to have dated when they were in their fourth year. All of that, and a grain of salt, after all.

"Lily did act kinda weird when she told me about being pregnant," Roxy confessed, making Rose inhale sharply. "I mean, she went all pale and her eyes bugged out and she—she started, like, chanting or something? Talking about two girls who know something, though she wouldn't properly explain that part, so fuck if I could tell you what it means."

"Lily was prophesying?" Rose muttered sceptically, turning a critical eye to the young redhead, who was now slumped on one of Molly's couches, looking thoroughly put out.

"Iunno if I would call it a _prophecy_." _But that's what it was, wasn't it? Like all those muggle movies you've seen, where the person goes all stiff and starts shaking?_ Roxy shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. "But it was definitely weird. I mean, look what happened to me."

She rolled up her sleeve to show Rose the bruises scattered up and down her arm. Rose gasped, running her fingers lightly over Roxy's damaged skin, taking in the sight of it with a look of disbelief, muttering to herself.

"Rox," she finally said, meeting Roxy's curious gaze. "I think what happened to Lily _was_ a real prophecy. Whether it's about ghosts or not, I couldn't tell you, but from what you said, she sounds just like all the accounts of Cassandra, or Trelawney!"

"Who?"

"Oh, come off it, Rox!" Rose protested. "Don't tell me you don't know about the most famous prophet of the twentieth century." Roxy shook her head. "Well, that doesn't matter just now. But what _does_ matter is that, if Lily really _did_ experience a prophecy, it can only mean one thing." She paused dramatically, making Roxy roll her eyes. What was it with her family and their tendency to turn everything into an ordeal?

"What's it mean, Rose?"

"That means that everything's changing, of course! We might be looking at something big coming our way in the future!"

"Big?"

"Yeah—like another Wizarding War, or another Dark Lord. Roxy, this might mean that life as we know it will change forever."

"But—"

"For our sake's, you better hope that Lily's 'prophecy' or whatever was just a fake one brought on by the stress of pregnancy."

"Is that possible?" Roxy muttered.

"It's been known to happen." Rose grabbed Roxy's hands tightly, looking at her little cousin intently. "But there's only one way to know—we have to visit a known Oracle. We have to visit _Sybill Trelawney_."

Roxy was very, _very_ confused. Why couldn't anyone if her family just be normal? And _who_ , in the name of Merlin, was Sybill Trelawney?


	20. Wherein we meet a lunatic

There were very few kindly written words concerning Sybill Trelawney, Roxy found as she sat in the local library of Diagon Alley. Roxy flipped through page after page of textbooks, historical accounts, dramatizations, and newspaper clippings. Many did not even refer to Professor Trelawney at all, like she was little more than a ghost, thought to exist, but never quite provable.

There were only two known photographs of Trelawney that Roxy found dating before her time as a Professor; the first one was her at about fourteen or fifteen, marked with the year _1965_ , and showing a frizzy, ditzy blonde wearing Ravenclaw robes and a happy smile as she waved at the camera. The second photo was a few years later—her early twenties, at the latest, Roxy guessed—where Trelawney wore fancy, white dress robes as she and a pudgy, dark-haired man held hands, being bound together in marriage by an older wizard.

Excepting those two photos, it appeared as if Trelawney just appeared one day, draping in a dozen shawls and spouting off random predictions of various political figure's deaths, none of which were ever proven to have come true.

When Trelawney _was_ finally mentioned, it was usually scornfully linked to a supposed prophecy that surrounded Uncle Harry when he was growing up. No one who wrote of this prophecy appeared to believe in its existence to begin with, let alone Trelawney's involvement, noting that it harkened back to the children's stories of the Deathly Hallows.

The answer to her question— _who is Sybill Trelawney?—_ turned out to be obnoxiously more difficult than Roxy anticipated. Out of the hundreds of books that were written in the last thirty years surrounding the war, only sixteen bothered to mention Trelawney's name. Of these, ten briefly mentioned her as the elderly Divination teacher from way back, hired before her parents even started Hogwarts. They stated absolutely nothing more about her, except to hint that she was not of the sanest temperaments.

Out of the remaining six, three immediately discredited her as a fraud and a conspirator of Dumbledore's, while another two complimented her for her services during the Battle of Hogwarts, but called her a "half-baked soothsayer who never knew when to keep her so-called predictions to herself", as well as an "alcoholic, shambling half-wit that thought she was Cassandra come again, when in reality, Trelawney could not even predict what she would consume for supper the very next night".

The very last book—which Roxy discovered was full of information that could not be found in any of the other books, a fact that originally excited her until she discovered that this was because it was published by the same company that was in charge of _The Quibbler_ —stated that Sybil Trelawney was an understated genius, a real gem that was horribly misunderstood by those of her time, but whose contributions would be recognised, one day, when the world was ready to remember her in the shining glory that Trelawney was so deserving of.

 _Harry Potter is a brave hero_ the stories all said _but he was not summoned by any prophecy or incantation our time of great need. He was a clever boy with clever friends and a hell of a lot of luck. We're_ wizards, _for Merlin's sake, not some damn muggle "conspiracists that see a greater "force" controlling our actions wherever we turn._

Roxy remembered Rose briefly mentioning a prophecy about Uncle Harry when she was wheedling the younger girl into visiting Trelawney, but that didn't make it any more likely that any of this was real. After all, wouldn't something as important as a prophecy have been mentioned in class? Wouldn't Uncle Harry have come out and admitted that his defeat of the Dark Lord was due to "mystical forces beyond his control", in order to deter future copycats the next time a Dark wizard came around?

It was at this point that Roxanne finally remembered that Trelawney—she of the Professorship, despite a clear lack of sanity or general ability to teach—was the same at the batty old woman who lived in one of the highest towers at Hogwarts and rarely came down to visit anymore except for Christmas dinners; even then, she smelled horribly, reeking of alcohol and too few showers, and would predict the death of at least one student each time, usually in the bloodiest, most gruesome manner she could think up.

Trelawney—the joke of many of the older students, whose parents and siblings remembered when Divination was a _real_ subject that was taught as concretely as Transfiguration or Astronomy. Nowadays, anyone interested in the art of looking into the future would only be able to find hope in the elusive answers of Batizno, a centaur whose father had once taught Divination at Hogwarts.

Roxy remembered seeing the batty old Professor over the Christmas holidays her fourth year; she hadn't felt like going home that year, and instead chose to stay with Jo and Aleah.

Dinner was going fairly normally, with eight types of pudding and a turkey bigger that Roxy's head, as well as plenty of poppers containing toys and sweets—at least, up to the point where a clearly drunken Trelawney had arrived and began to predict the deaths of four students, Professor Shrever, and half a dozen house elves. Trelawney was later escorted back to her chambers by two seventh year boys as she screamed giddily about the end of all days.

And this was the woman that Rose wanted to talk to? Was it just a Weasley thing to be absolutely mad, or were her cousins particularly unlucky in the sanity department?

* * *

"So let me get this straight, Rose. You're taking me to see some lunatic old woman who spends most of her days locked away in the Divination Tower at Hogwarts, where she raves about nonsensical prophecies that are almost _never_ right, and has been written off by plenty of scholars—including your own mother, might I add—as being little more than a fraud and a con artist? And you believe she might have the answers we're looking for about Lily's so-called ' _prophecy_ '?"

" _Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure,_ " Rose said in a sing-song voice that made Roxy want to hit the older girl. "Trelawney was a Ravenclaw in her time, did you know? And they don't let just _anybody_ into Ravenclaw. You have to be smart! You have to be passionate about learning! You have to-"

"Be a kook, like Aunt Luna or Lucy? Or perhaps a lying cheat, like Rita Skeeter or Gilderoy Lockhart? Or what about a self-serving traitor, like Marietta Edgecombe or Marcus Belby?"

"Okay, okay, I get it. Not everyone in Ravenclaw is the greatest person ever." Rose scowled down at her younger cousin. "But that doesn't mean we shouldn't give Trelawney a chance. They say she's descended from Cassandra Trelawney; her great-great-great-granddaughter, or something of that nature. And whether or not she ever inherited Cassandra's powers, Trelawney _did_ get and _hold_ the position of Divination professor for more than twenty-five years before they finally took it off of the curriculum. She has to know at least _something_ about prophecies, or else Dumbledore wouldn't have hired her, and McGonagall wouldn't have kept her on the staff."

"You want us to meet her, just like that?" Roxy snapped her fingers to emphasise her point. "What, did you owl her and ask for a meeting—time, date, and place? Or—no—let me guess, _she_ wrote to _you_ because she'd seen us meeting in her crystal ball. Is that right?"

Rose scowled, crossing her arms over her stomach. The frown faltered after a few seconds before fading into embarrassment. "I owled her as soon as I got home from Mol's. I figured that would be the best way to get a quick response."

"And she answered?"

"Well..." Rose kicked at the floor. It was easy to see the eleven year old girl in Rose who was sorted into Ravenclaw, always analysing whether or not she had been placed in the best house for her. "I mean, she hasn't answered _yet._ But I'm sure she wouldn't mind us visiting for an hour or so. After all, from what I've heard, she's never had a problem sharing her 'visions of death' with complete strangers."

This last statement was spoken more harshly, making Roxy peer at her cousin curiously. Up until now, Rose was completely eager to meet Trelawney, despite Roxy's trepidation, but looking at her cousin, it was easy to see the uneasiness on the older girl's face. Then the expression shifted to something more amicable, agreeable.

Roxy groaned. "Are you serious, Rose? I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be smart and good at planning things out properly." Rose at least had the decency to look embarrassed. "So you want us to just head over to Hogwarts _without invitation_ to antagonise an old lady because our possibly psychotic cousins are talking about the end of the world and the return of ghosts?"

"Yes?" Rose squeaked.

"Are we sure _I'm_ the youngest here? This is like—that's really naive, actually, Rose. Like, on a dangerously immature level. What even possessed you to think any of this would work if you didn't plan it out first? I mean, does Professor Shrever even know you want to go on campus?" Rose blushed, shaking her head. "Great! Great! Yet another thing you forgot to account for. So let me get this straight-you can plan out a bloody _wedding_ for both yourself and Albus, but not a meeting with Sybill Trelawney. Well, I'm glad _that's_ been figured out!"

* * *

They met with her anyway, scheduled meeting or not. Professor Shrever, though a bit perplexed as to why Roxy and Rose showed up in Hogsmeade asking for entry into the school—"to visit Professor Trelawney? Are you sure?"—let them in, advising that they be as polite as possible around Trelawney.

"She's getting on in age, you know. Not the most stable of mind, that one. And just make sure not to interrupt any classes going on while you're here."

Rose laughed and told the Headmistress that they would be fine; Roxy didn't entirely agree, nor did she understand her cousin's very relaxed attitude towards what was clearly a mentally unsteady woman who was known to be violent when she was intoxicated—and she was apparently regularly intoxicated.

The two cousins traipsed up the many stairs that led to Professor Trelawney's tower, where, after a moment's glance at each other to see who would be brave enough to knock on the door, it was flung open unexpectedly, as though they _had_ planned out a meeting and Trelawney was waiting behind the door for their arrival.

Trelawney smelled of cooking sherry and rum; her greying, frizzy hair kept escaping from the too large headscarf wrapped across her forehead and draped over her twitchy shoulders. Trelawney watched them with big, dark green eyes that made her look very bug-like, and did little to make her anything _less_ than creepy. Roxy shivered when Trelawney's eyes raked over her, because it felt like the old woman was seeing inside Roxy's mind, pulling out her thoughts one by one and interpreting them.

 _What if she_ is _the real deal?_ Roxy thought to herself, still sceptical, and gave the ageing witch another glance out of the corner of her eye, wondering—if there _was_ more to this old woman than met the eye—how much of it was real, and how much of it had been perfected over the years as part of Sybill Trelawney's greatest scam.

"I have grown used to those who do not believe me, Miss Weasley," Trelawney said in a hoarse voice; the smell of alcohol intensified, making Roxy and Rose wince, but Trelawney didn't seem to notice—or, at least, she didn't mind. "There are plenty enough in this world who would love to discredit me as a liar and a lunatic until their dying breath, because to do otherwise would be to admit that there are forces in our world which are greater than any of us have ever known."

They sat down at a small wooden table, where three warm cups of tea were already waiting. Roxy turned to Rose, who raised an eyebrow as if to say _Hey, they said she was a Seer. I guess this must prove it._

"I know what they say about me, Miss Weasley. I am a kook, at best. At worse, I am a fraud, a con artist, a falsifier of truths to separate the weak-willed from their money as they futilely try to make sense of this world."

"But you don't believe that to be true, right?" Rose asked, leaning forward. "You think you're the real thing?" Her voice was hollow—listening to Trelawney's words, yet somehow robotic, like she were reading off of a script. Interested, but not quite invested.

Trelawney peered at Rose through her thick glasses and smiled widely at the girl. "I taught your parents, once upon a time. Oh, yes," she chuckled, seeing Rose's incredulous look. "Your mother, sceptic that she is, was once my pupil. She didn't even make it through the year, but there was a time that I could claim to teach the ' _great_ ' Hermione Granger." Trelawney's tone was scathing, though she still continued to smile cheerily. "And your father-quite the pupil, that one. He and Mr Potter were amongst my top students, I would say, though unfortunately, neither chose to continue in my dangerous dance with the heavens."

Roxy couldn't imagine Aunt Hermione ever dropping a class; nor could she see Uncle Ron being successful in something as dumb as Divination. Rose, however, was entranced by Trelawney's words; she leaned in close to hear what the old woman was saying, eager to hear more about her parents as teenagers, before she was alive.

"I lost the best students I ever had in the Battle," Trelawney said forlornly, looking down at her teacup as she swirled the contents around a few times. "They knew, more than anyone else, how powerful the Inner Eye can be when it's in the right hands. Perhaps, with time and more practise, they, too, might have achieved the reward that is a _true prophecy._ But, alas, their time came to an end far too soon."

"As a Seer, shouldn't you have been able to predict that and plan accordingly?" Roxy asked bluntly, which made Rose gasp and Trelawney to dramatically toss one of her scarfs over her shoulder.

"My dear, the Inner Eye is not some simple tool that can be called upon at any time just because I will it to be so. True prophecies are a rare prize, and very rarely make sense to those are witness to them. To speak so frankly of such a gift-why, it nearly upsets my disposition to hear you say such crude things! And about children as dear to me as if they were my own, as well!"

Rose nodded eagerly, though when Roxy looked over at her cousin, she felt that she was looking at some creature that was not quite Rose anymore, as if she were under some strange spell that made her more inclined to agree with Trelawney's ramblings.

Roxy squinted at the old professor, wondering if, despite her mostly amicable nature, the so-called Seer was desperate enough for an agreeable companion that she would resort to magicking one into existence in the form of Rose Weasley; because her cousin was acting less and less like herself with every minute that passed.

"What's wrong with you?" she hissed at Rose. The other girl turned slightly, one eyebrow raised. "Why're you agreeing with her? Just an hour ago, you were saying how you regretted coming here, because Trelawney's a faker and a liar. I thought this was a waste of our time."

Rose shook her head. "I've listened to her speak, and now I know the truth. She _is_ a Seer, she must be, to be so wise and knowledgeable." Roxy noticed the way her cousin's voice now _definitely_ took on an almost mechanical tone to it, the words coming out stiff and awkward, as though she did not quite believe what she was saying.

"Rosie, are you okay?" she started to ask, but just then, Rose wobbled in her seat, blinking once—twice—and then collapsed onto the floor. Roxy yelled, dropping onto her knees to check her cousin's pulse. Though Rose was still alive, her heart rate was slowed dramatically.

"What did you do to her?" Roxy demanded, glaring up at Trelawney as she struggled to hold her cousin up. "You've been messing with her the whole time we've been here, you've messed her up—so what did you do to Rose?"

Trelawney shook her head, just as confused as Roxy was. She backed away from the two girls, growing pale. The cup of tea she was drinking fell from her hands and smashed against the table.

Roxy continued to glare at the old Professor, not wanting to fall for Trelawney's apparent panic, in case it all turned out to just be an act to get Roxy to trust her.

"I—I swear, I didn't, I d-didn't," Trelawney spluttered, aghast. "I haven't done anything at all to her. I thought—you just came to talk, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I swear!"

"Did you do something to the tea?" yelled Roxy. "Were you trying to poison us? To kill us? Did someone tell you to do this to her—to me?"

"No! No! I—" Trelawney froze, eyes bulging out from her head, and her fingers moved to claw at her throat. Her skin first went nearly translucent and then took on a more purple hue. She was choking, gasping for air. She collapsed to the ground, struggling.

Roxy set Rose down and hurried over to the suffocating professor. It would look bad to be found with her unconscious cousin, and look even worse should anything happen to Trelawney whilst they were still in her quarters. Regardless of whether or not the Divination professor was telling truth about what was wrong with Rose, Roxy needed to keep the old woman alive, if only for a little longer.

Before Roxy could even touch Trelawney, though, the woman sat up calmly, turning to look in Roxy's direction, though her eyes were glassy. Her skin was now ashy, and when Roxy grabbed Trelawney's hand, the professor was cold. Her eyes, bulging slightly still, rotated in their sockets as she continued to twitch convulse, though she no longer was choking.

"Professor?" Roxy asked quietly. "Professor, are you alright? What's happened?" Trelawney didn't answer, still staring in Roxy's direction without blinking or acknowledging that the girl was even there. It was like being in front of Lily all over again, begging her cousin to say something, to react somehow, to stop being so _weird_ because it was scaring Roxy.

" _Two little girls,"_ Trelawney said suddenly, in the same dead, raspy tone that Lily had spoken in a few days earlier. " _Two little girls, and they alone know when the world will end. They alone know when the kings will fall. They can see the truth like no one else—see how the world truly is, to see the world as it ends in flames and it ends in ice. Two little girls—and only they know the way out._ "

Trelawney shuddered, jerking away from Roxy's grasp, and, after blinking a few times, looked up at the girl crouching over her, who was trembling with fear.

"I'm sorry, my dear," Trelawney said calmly, like nothing had happened at all. "I really don't know what happened to your cousin—but look! I think she might be waking up now!"

Rose was indeed shifting around, blearily squinting into the sudden light, groaning as she moved first one limb and the other, testing her ability to move, to sit up. Rose's hands wandered up and down to check that she could still see and hear and touch. Heart still beating, lungs still breathing, blood still coursing through her body.

"Rox?" she asked groggily, tilting her head as she took in the sight of Roxy standing over Trelawney, both of them breathing raggedly, faces drained of any colour, though Trelawney didn't notice that she was sweating. "Rox, what's happened? Did I—did I fall asleep? What's going on?"

Trelawney gently pushed Roxy away, making the girl stumble back as Roxy struggled to process everything that just happened. Rose—passing out and then waking up just after Trelawney's prophecy ( _a real prophecy it was a real prophecy she can really see the future what the hell what the buggering hell_ ) that almost perfectly mirrored what Lily told her only a few days ago.

This was real. All of this was real. The prophecies, the ghosts, the end of the world as they knew it. Everything was real—and Roxy was panicking. This was all happening much too fast and all at once for her to handle. She could feel herself shutting down, the oxygen refusing to wake up her brain as her lung struggled to keep up with her rapidly increasing rate of breath.

"Roxy? Are you okay?"

"Miss Weasley?"

"Hey—hey! She's passing out, she's—!"


	21. The interns grow closer (sort of)

_She was outside of the wreckage that was once her home. A smashed street lamp laid, snapped and bent in half, in the middle of the street behind her. Small fires that were left unattended grew into larger ones that quickly ate up whatever remained of the collapsed and collapsing buildings around her._

 _Yet, despite the flames, Roxy couldn't help but shiver, feeling a coldness deep inside of her that was more than just the chill from an errant wind. Her very insides felt frozen and brittle. Roxy was afraid that, if something were to come up behind her and touch her, even lightly, every bone in her body would shatter as if made of glass._

 _It was then that she remembered the false Freddie—the one that looked like her brother, but could not be him, because Freddie was dead and had no reason to be haunting her dreams._

 _Roxy spun around, half expecting for the fake version of her brother to be waiting right behind her with a knife or a wand pointed in her direction, but there was nothing behind her. She was entirely alone, left to silence and solitude._

 _Well, silence except for the groans of burning house as they fell victim to the flames, their wood blackening and twisting. Other than the ethereal moaning of the dying houses, though, Roxy was completely and entirely alone._

" _Hello?" she called softly. Roxy would rather have the fake copy of her brother around than be all alone on this destroyed street with night falling quickly and the flames dancing closer and closer to her with each passing second. "Hello? Freddie, are you still here? Freddie?"_

 _There was no response, though to be honest, she hadn't really expected one. The false version of her brother had long ago left this place; Roxy was not sure how she knew that, but the fact struck her very clearly in her mind, and she knew it to be true. This place gave her an uneasy feeling—something had happened to her home and to everyone she knew, but that made absolutely no sense. Why would anyone want to destroy Diagon Alley? And how could they have even done so in such a way to make everyone leave, and to abandon houses to flames and smoke?_

 _Was it possible that she was the only one left in this strange world? Had something happened to everyone else—either killed them all off or forced those that remained to run as far away as they could? And if she_ was _the only one left behind here, why?_

 _But this is a dream, she reminded herself, and dreams don't ever have to make sense. For all she knew, in this dream, she could also be as dead as everyone else, and just was not aware of it._

 _The thought made her cringe. Even in a dream, Roxy preferred to leave the realisation of her own mortality for another day. If she_ was _dead, Roxy decided, it was best to just avoid the subject for as long as she could._

 _There was a rumbling to her right as a burning house down the street folded in on itself and crumbled to the ground, becoming little more than a blackened husk, forgotten by its owners—a young couple, if Roxy remembered correctly. They'd had a baby recently, a little boy._

 _Roxy sighed and turned away from what remained of her house. There was no reason to stay in front of this empty skeleton any longer. The fake Freddie wouldn't be coming back, and it was obvious that there was no one else here for kilometres. And anyway, the smoke from the burning buildings was beginning to make her eyes sting._

 _She was better off looking for people somewhere other than this ghost town that had once been Diagon Alley._

 _Or perhaps she would wake up instead._

* * *

"You okay Rox?" Her cousin's face swam in front of Roxy, occasionally blurring together to form a shapeless blob before reassembling itself once more into Rose's worried features. "You didn't wake up immediately, and I panicked just a bit, so Trelawney helped me to carry you to the Hospital Wing." Rose leaned in to whisper into Roxy's ear, "See? She's not evil. A Seer? No, I don't think so, but at least she isn't a Dark witch in disguise, right?"

"Miss Weasley, I'm going to have to ask you to back away from your cousin. She **did** just wake up after suffering a concussion after all."

Roxy blinked in the direction of Madame Wainscott, the resident Healer of Hogwarts, who had taken over from Madame Pomfrey when the former retired nearly eighteen years ago.

Madame Wainscott smiled worriedly down at the singular occupant of the Hogwarts hospital wing. She hadn't been expecting to have any patients over the weekend—flu season having not yet hit the school in full force and no Quidditch match occurring until next week—so when Professor Trelawney and Rose Weasley carried in an unconscious Roxanne Weasley, she was a little more than surprised. After all, both girls were _former_ students at Hogwarts.

But she allowed them to come in without _too_ much protest; after all, Madame Wainscott had always enjoyed the various Weasleys that traipsed in and out of her hospital wing, and she had never heard anything but good things about the whole family from her cousin, Ernie, who had once been in that strange club that Harry Potter started at Hogwarts—Dumbledore's Army, or something of that nature. Madame Wainscott had gone to school in France and thus had escaped most of the horrors of the Wizarding War here in England, though she had heard quite a bit about it from her quite talkative cousin.

"Miss Weasley, if you have a moment, I'd like to step outside with you and discuss a few things." Madame Wainscott gave Rose a friendly smile, but her eyes indicated that this was not a request that she was making of the twenty-two year old.

"Oh, er." Rose turned to look at Roxy on the bed, shooting her cousin a questioning glance. Roxy nodded. "Sure. What do you need to talk to me about, Madame Wainscott?"

The two women headed into the hallway outside of the hospital wing, leaving Roxy by herself. She leaned against her pillow, taking a deep breath, and heard a crinkling noise against her back. She turned around and shifted her pillow around, wondering if the previous occupant had perhaps left a sweets wrapper on accident that a house-elf hadn't picked up.

There was a note resting underneath the hospital wing pillow. The paper was modern, muggle, and had been folded and unfolded and then folded again multiple times, as though handled by an anxious hand, uncertain whether to write anything at all and if it were safe to leave under the pillow that Roxy's head rested on.

They must have sneaked it in while she was unconscious, because Roxy had seen no one but Madame Wainscott and her cousins since she woke up, and it was unlikely that a true Seer was walking the halls of Hogwarts today and knew that Roxy would be in need of the hospital wing. Besides, neither Madame Wainscott nor Rose were very much the sort to leave secret notes under pillows rather than speaking to her outright.

This meant that there must been someone else in the hospital wing at some point in the forty minutes that she was unconscious.

They would have been either someone that Madame Wainscott trusted to let near her patients while they were unattended, or there was a moment where Roxy was left completely alone and someone sneaked in just to leave her a folded note written on muggle notebook paper.

She carefully bent back the corners until it was laying flat in her lap and squinted down at the small, thing handwriting before her. It was oddly familiar, though Roxy could not quite say from where she might have seen it before.

 _Miss Weasley,_

 _Answers shall soon come to questions you might find yourself wishing you had never asked. Return to your life as a potions' intern and give up on this quest for the truth, or else soon discover what happens to those who overstep their boundaries. This is not intended to comes across as a threat, but merely a warning. I am trying to help you, because you are running out of time, Miss Weasley. Please, do not press the issue any further. Forget your ghosts and let things be as they once were, for your own sake._

Roxy huffed, dropping the note into her lap and screwed her face up in annoyance. Why were there all these shadowy figures that wrote 'advice' to her without ever showing their faces? How many of them were there, truly—standing in the wings of her own personal play, directing her one way and the next, but never quite showing their faces and certainly never explaining their actions?

She was growing tired of. Roxy wanted answers, not more puzzle pieces that didn't fit together in any logical way.

"Rox?" Rose stood in the doorway of the hospital wing, a puzzled look on her face. "What's that in your hand?"

Roxy stuffed the paper into the pocket of her jeans and gave her cousin a forced smile. "It was just an old piece of trash, nothing important. An old note about work. Say, did Madame Wainscott say I could leave yet? Sitting in bed for an hour wasn't really what I wanted to do with my time." that was usually the best way to divert Rose's attention—change the subject to something entirely different to distract the older girl.

Rose narrowed her eyes, slightly suspicious—okay, so maybe she wasn't _completely_ fooled, Roxy though with a shrug—but Rose nodded. "She said we're free to leave at any time that we want, and because she likes us so much, she won't even write your mum to tell her we were ever here or that you got hurt."

Roxy let out a sigh of relief and slid from the bed, shaking her head when Rose offered an assistive hand. She could make it to Hogsmeade without relying on her cousin. The two made their way out of the school and down from the grounds of Hogwarts with only mild trouble. It was a good thing that they were leaving in the middle of the day, when the majority of students were still in class; otherwise, the two cousins might have gotten sidetracked dealing with questions from curious children wanting to know why _Weasleys_ were on campus once more.

When they got to the edge of Hogsmeade, Rose twisted slightly, Roxy grabbing her wrist, and then they disappeared from sight.

* * *

For the most part, work was pretty peaceful; Roxy had gotten into the rhythm of arriving every day just before eight and avoiding making eye contact with anyone else as she headed to her station, occasionally waving at a few of the friendlier of her fellow interns, but for the most part, feeling ignored by those around her, who thought Roxy was weird for having been in Slytherin. Even more than twenty years after the War, people insisted on seeing everyone they met as being on one side or the other.

"Hey Weasley." She winced, but kept walking. McGregor and his two cronies—Tolti and Maldonado—had apparently been waiting for her to arrive, because when she passed them, they leered at her and stretched out their hands to grab at her robes. "Hey Weasley," called McGregor again. "You're late, Weasley, did you know that? It's 8:03, and you only just now signed in. D'you think I should report you to Starsha now or wait until inspection begins? Hey—hey Tolti, do you think this'll finally be enough to get rid of the stupid little Slytherin?"

"I hope so," replied Tolti. "She smells funny." He wrinkled his nose and waved a hand in front of his face as if smelling something unpleasant. This made a few of the interns close enough to hear the discussion chuckle uneasily. After all, it was better to laugh at someone else's misfortune than risk becoming the victims themselves.

"Can you just leave me alone for once, McGregor? I'm trying to be a professional and all you're doing is distracting me from my work. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some things to sort through." Roxy moved forward again, but stopped when she noticed that her station was in complete disarray.

Potions were spilt everywhere, ingredients were scattered and disorganised, and months of paperwork laid all over the floor. The walls of her station were glowing a strange yellow colour that she didn't trust.

"You wrecked my station!" she yelled, whirling around to face McGregor, who only feigned confusion. "You _know_ we have inspection today! Why would you do this—are you _trying_ to get me fired or something? Do you not want me here for some stupid reason?"

"Nobody _wants_ you here, Weasley, don't you know that? Haven't you figured it out yet? We hate you—we hate that you're a Slytherin, we that you got into this program purely based on your last name instead of any actual talent, and we hate that you even exist. This whole company would be better off if you quit, if you—"

"Would you kindly shut the hell up, McGregor?" This came from a short girl of Asian descent, who stood in front of McGregor with her hands on her hips and gave him the most disgusted look Roxy had seen anyone ever pull off in her life. The other girl was a new intern, just like Roxy, and was the only other female in the room. Roxy was pretty sure her name was Aniya, though the girls had never spoken in the two and a half months that they'd been working together.

"What d'you care, Lamb?" McGregor retorted, sneering. It made his nose flare and his lip curl up into a snarl that reminded Roxy of a sour-faced dog. "She's just a stupid Slytherin. They're all the same, in the end—they're all malicious and manipulative. I mean, for Merlin's sake, Lamb, she's a _damn Slytherin_! A _dirty Slytherin_! They aren't even worth it to bother with."

Aniya rolled her eyes. "Yet here you are, bothering with her. It's like, honestly, what are you, five fucking years old? It's not as if she's the daughter of Death Eaters or anything. I just—have you _not_ ever read a textbook or a newspaper? The Weasley family was one of the most heavily involved groups on the Light side of the war! And even beyond that, who bloody cares if she's a Slytherin? Am I supposed to always skip around and smile at everyone like a brainless dolt just because I'm in Hufflepuff? Should Des always have his nose in a book just because he's a Ravenclaw?"

"The only stereotype here is you," Roxy said, giving Aniya a grateful smile. She, like most Slytherins, was used to defending herself against prejudiced students who saw the Slytherin markings next to her name and decided that this singular fact made her evil.. It was nice to have someone else stick up for her for once.

"Exactly!" Aniya cried, throwing her hands in to the air. "But _you_ , douche bag 'senior intern because I kiss Starsha's ass and then some' are far too busy pretending to be Mr Macho all the time and bossing everyone else around because it's the only way you can feel good about yourself any more, apparently, even though all it does it make everyone else resent you because you're such a self-entitled whiner who has fucking _henchmen_ to do your work for you. It's—"

"Sad. And pathetic." Desmond Guillory, who rarely spoke, stared at McGregor, daring him to talk back to the 168cm male. "McGregor only picks on girls because he thinks they won't ever fight back. He's a coward."

"How about you all just shut the hell up and go back to your little nerd holes?" McGregor snapped, eyes flashing and nostrils flaring once again. He did not like being attacked, especially not by a group like this, and immediately jumped to the defensive. "I'm still the senior most intern here. One word to Starsha and I could have all three of you written up and fired within an hour."

"Only because you're sleeping with her," Desmond replied, making a few of the other interns laugh nervously.

There had been a rumour going around for quite a while that Starsha's preferential treatment towards McGregor and his friends was because she _was_ having some sort of sexual relationship with the twenty-two year old, despite being more than twice his age—not to mention 'happily' married.

"What'd you say, you little shit?" McGregor roared, lunging for Desmond, who only looked at the older boy witheringly before punching him in the stomach. McGregor gasped loudly as all the air was knocked out of him.

Even more of the interns laughed at this, further angering McGregor, who—foolishly—ran at Desmond once more. This time, the taller boy whacked McGregor on the ear, making him wince in pain and cover the side of his head with his hand. Desmond then hooked his leg around the back of McGregor's knee and sent the other male sprawling across the floor, smashing his face into the hard stone floor.

The entire room burst out laughing while McGregor spluttered and demanded that Tolti and Maldonado help him back up; both boys, however, were too busy clinging to each other and mocking the shocked expression on McGregor's face when he had hit the ground.

"I'll fuck you up, Guillory!" McGregor spat, giving the taller boy a murderous glare. " _I'm_ the senior intern here, not you, and I can make your life a living hell for what you just did to me. I can make _all_ your lives hell! Stop—stop laughing, you dolts! Shut up! Shut the hell _up!_ "

But the other interns were enjoying themselves to hear what McGregor was yelling. And to think, this whole confrontation had started over one measly Slytherin, who—in all honest, the interns thought to themselves, wasn't _that_ bad. The others began to slowly look over at Roxy with something a little less strong than their usual expressions of disgust.

After all, if Desmond Guillory could so easily take McGregor out, maybe the senior intern didn't deserve as much power as the younger assistants gave him.

It was at that moment that the door to the interns' office was thrown open. All sixteen people fell immediately silent, turning to look as Mandre Starsha stomped into the room, her heels clicking noisily against the floor.

Starsha was tall for a female, with black hair that was going grey in the back; cold grey eyes swept across the room, taking in a red-faced McGregor, a grinning Aniya Lamb, and fourteen hands covering fourteen mouths to keep from bursting out in laugher in front of their extremely stern supervisor.

"What in the name of Morgana herself are you half-wits doing standing around here? Don't you know there's an inspection today. Don't you remember that Henrik's is a place for professionals who are _seriously_ interested in potions—or are your brains so small that you cannot even comprehend the importance of your work here? Would you like me to fire you all on the spot right here—yes, even you McGregor, don't gape at me like that, it's unseemly—or are you going to stop goofing around and begin acting like the adults that this company mistakenly thinks you are?"

She glares at them all, tapping her fist on the side of her leg as she waits for an answer that the interns are too afraid to give her. McGregor may be a big, dumb nutter that was hyped up up on his own ego, but Starsha was dangerous. If you were to piss her off, she'd send you packing for the day in a heartbeat—or possibly send you off for good.

"Well?" Starsha demanded harshly of her interns. "What are we waiting for? Get to your stations, it's going to be inspection time in just under an hour!"

"Here, I can help you clean up," said Aniya cheerily, pulling her wand out and waving it around to get everything on her desk to begin tidying itself up. "It's the least I can do since McGregor and his lackeys decided to be massive gits, as usual."  
"Thanks. For everything." Roxy gave the other girl an uneasy smile before pulling out her own wand.

* * *

At their lunch break, for the first time, Roxy did not take her cousin Rose up on the offer to share lunch together. Instead, she was waved over to Aniya's station, where the two girls—along with a mostly silent Desmond—sat together and chatted. They would, by the end, maybe not have called themselves friends, perhaps, but they were no longer just mere co-workers.

Roxy supposed that standing up against the biggest prick in the office certainly helped to form a certain kind of bond. And, after walking with Aniya to the fireplaces before they Flooed home, the two girls made plans to meet up over the weekend for drinks.

"Hey Weasley," Aniya called just as Roxy readied herself to step into the green flames. Roxy turned to look at the other girl, tilting her head in curiosity. "You know, you aren't half bad. For a Slytherin, I mean." Aniya grinned at Roxy, who only rolled her eyes and began to disappear into the flames. "See you around, Weasley!" Aniya called just before everything blurred and changed into the features of her mother's familiar sitting room.

It was nice, Roxy though to herself with a smile. Having someone that could be considered a friend was definitely a plus.


	22. And now everything has fallen apart

Grandmum Weasley did not take the news of Lily's pregnancy well. Though she was by no means old-fashioned, the idea of her precious little granddaughter sleeping around with her boyfriends and then getting pregnant by him—with no intention of staying together or getting married!—made the ageing matriarch's heart flutter.

She had to be helped back into her seat after having leapt up in protest when Lily made her announcement. Grandmum's face lost all colour, turning the same shade of a freshly washed bed sheet, her hands covering her chest, where Molly Weasley's heart was threatening to leap out and give up on her for good.

"My Lily...pregnant?" she echoed in a breathy voice, looking from her daughter to her granddaughter, (Uncle Harry was _coincidentally_ and al too suspiciously away on a mission) hoping that one of them would begin laughing and explain that it was all a big joke, and that _of course_ Lily wasn't pregnant, how silly would that be when she was always such a _perfect little angel_.

"Yes Gran, I'm pregnant. And yes, it's Tolkien's, but no, we're not going to get back together just because of this. I'm bit going to push him into a marriage just because we were dumb enough to have a baby." Lily glared around the room, daring any of her family members to protest. For such a physically unimpressive person, Lily could be pretty scary, and the other Weasleys knew this well.

No one spoke against her.

"Yes, well." Grandmum cleared her throat awkwardly, giving her husband a questioning glance, who merely mouthed something back to her. Grandmum turned back to face Lily with a tense smile. "I suppose congratulations of a sort are in order then, yes? After all, it's not every day that one becomes a mother—or that their mother should become a grandmother."

Aunt Ginny only huffed quietly, avoiding making eye contact with any of her family members.

Lily had confessed to Roxy that, between her parents, Aunt Ginny was more embarrassed than anything else, mostly because she'd once hexed Tolkien Smith's father when they were at Hogwarts together; apparently the idea of sharing a grandchild with the very man made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, especially when thinking about the next time that the two would meet.

Other than that, though, neither of Lily's parents were anything more harsh than mildly disappointed to hear that their twenty year old daughter was now pregnant.

Roxy thought that, if the same were to happen to her, Mum's reaction would be very, very different.

"So when's it, uh, due? Like, do you know or—uh, I mean, have you talked to a Healer about it, or..." Louis trailed off, turning completely red, which made many of the female Weasleys snicker.

"April. The Healers said probably in April, I think. I'm going back in tomorrow with Mum and they'll, y'know, confirm everything that can be confirmed and make estimates about what can't be. Usual pregnancy stuff, I guess," replied Lily with a shrug.

"Oh, Lily, aren't you excited? You're having a baby! Perhaps your little boy or girl will become best friends with Will—they'll only be two years apart in age. You could bring the baby over to our place when you need some time alone, or—"

"I haven't even had the damn baby yet!" Lily threw up her hands in annoyance. "Stop planning out its whole life before it's even fucking here. And besides, there's guarantee I'm even going to keep it, so don't start mapping the life of something that might not even be here in a year's time."

"What do you mean?" demanded Grandmum and Victoire at the same time, looking scandalised. Even Aunt Ginny shot her daughter a look of disbelief—Lily had clearly not mentioned anything about not keeping her baby when she had told Aunt Ginny about her pregnancy.

"You have to keep the baby! You're its Mum!"

"Well, as its biological mother, I'm saying that choice is more up to me than anyone else's. Besides, I'm too far gone to do anything about it the—the muggle way, and I'm not sure I would have wanted to do that anyway, but…" Lily trailed off, shrugging. "But adoption is always a ready and available option. I'm sure there are plenty of wizarding couples that would love to say they adopted the first grandchild of Harry Potter himself. Or—" She looked around the table. "—I was looking into it and, apparently, it's a lot easier to adopt within the family. If anyone, y'know, was interested in that sort of thing."

There was another awkward pause in the conversation at the Weasleys all exchanged glances. The adults had grown far too accustomed to not having young children around the house any more to imagine dealing with an infant full time once again; the cousins—with the exception of perhaps Victoire, who always knew she wanted to be a mother one day—felt they were far too young and inexperienced to suddenly become a parent out of the blue.

Lily sighed. "Yeah, I wasn't really expecting anyone to jump out of their seat and beg me for the opportunity to raise a kid that isn't theirs, so none of this is exactly coming as a surprise. It is rather unfair of me to think someone would so quickly be willing to claim responsibility for a child, but oh well. It was worth a shot, at least."

Roxy shot her cousin the most sympathetic look she could manage, though Roxy would be lying if she said she didn't think Lily deserved her current predicament, at least a little bit. After all, Lily had been the one dumb enough to choose to have sex without protection, or at least while too inebriated to think about protection. The possibility of her getting pregnant had always existed; Lily was just one more unfortunate statistic.

She noticed that, while most of their cousins had seemed put off by the idea of adopting a baby—even Rose, who had been looking into maybe one day adopting a little child along with her wife—Lucy was staring at Lily with wide eyes, her head tilted. Lucy had not spoken up when Lily brought up adoption, but this was not unusual; Lucy usually did not speak unless individually addressed, and even then, she could be annoyingly vague and would ramble about topics that had very little to do with what they'd been previously discussing.

But was it possible that Lucy was interested in adopting Lily's child? She was twenty-three, with a fairly steady income and lived with Louis and his girlfriend, Rayna. Lucy had once been pregnant with a little boy that she'd miscarried at nearly six months; Roxy knew Lucy had never really gotten over her lost child, so perhaps taking over the care of Lily's would help.

"Hey Lily—" she started to say when Lucy stood up, clearing her throat loudly. The other members of the family turned to look at Lucy, mildly startled, since Lucy almost never made announcements at these family dinners.

"I would like to go for a walk now," Lucy said in her usual dreamy voice, which made Molly—the younger one—roll her eyes at her sister's behaviour. "Roxy, Lily, would you mind coming with me? I want to talk to you about a few things."

"It's snowing outside," protested Lily, but Roxy could see the seriousness in Lucy's eyes when she spoke, and knew that this was not just another one of Lucy's fleeting desires. She nodded, grabbing Lily by the wrist, and they—with only a few more minor protests from Lily—collected their cloaks.

"If it gets too cold, make sure you come back in straight away, do you hear me, girls?" said Aunt Audrey insistently; they nodded, heading outside quietly.

It was blistering outside. Though Lily's protests of falling snow were slightly off, as the weather was mostly calm for now, the ground was still buried under a heavy layer of the frozen white stuff, making it hard to navigate. They trekked slowly through the front yard, boots and socks quickly becoming soaked.

"Why are we out here?" grumbled Lily into Roxy's ear as she sank into the snow. "It's fucking freezing out here and I would much rather be eating pudding by the fire."

"Dunno. Maybe she wants to tell us something? She seemed pretty—pretty not Lucy about it. Hey, do you think you should apologise about last week to her? That was rather mean of you, Lily."

The redhead sighed, but nodded. "Hey Lucy," she called to their older cousin, who turned around a blank expression, staring at them without a hint of emotion. She reminded Roxy of a human-sized doll. It made Lucy seem creepy and almost human, but there was something not quite right about her.

"Yes?" Lucy finally asked slowly, like speaking pained her.

"Look Lucy, it's not—I mean—I wasn't, er,-it's just that, well, y'know how…" Lily turned scarlet, shaking her head, at a complete loss for words. "You know I'm sorry, though, right? About what I said at Molly's place? It was quite rude of me and I should never have intentionally tried to hurt you in that way. So I'm very, very sorry and I hope you can find it within yourself to forgive me."

The apology sounded forced even to Roxy, but Lucy only nodded in an absent-minded way, not at all focusing on what Lily was saying. Lucy was far too busy digging around in the pocket of her jeans, looking for something; she must not have found it, though, because a moment later, Lucy sighed and turned to face her cousins once more.

"You've been told twice now, Roxy. Are you going to listen yet, or will you continue to ignore what the spirits are telling you? After saying the same thing so many times to a stubborn girl that refuses to listen, they find themselves growing tired, and may find it far easier to move on to someone more willing to comply with their wishes. And to find that you have disregarded the spirits..." Lucy sighed, the words she speaking laying heavily on her heart, and weighing her down so much she could barely stand straight. "I sorry about your lack of faith, Roxy, and your unwillingness to believe what had been so clearly and plainly presented to you."

"Told?" Roxy blinked at her cousin, bewildered. "What're you talking about, Lu? What've I been 'told twice' now?"

"Wait, so this isn't about me being a bitch to Lucy last week? Why'm I even here then?" Lily demanded.

Lucy didn't respond to either of them, merely taking the younger girls by the hand and leading them even further away from the house. Snow began to fall lightly as they came upon the base of the hill that overlooked their surroundings. From the top, they would be able to see everything—the Burrow, the Rook that belonged to Mrs Scamander, the muggle town of Ottery St Catchpole.

The hill was a place of many fairly positive memories for Roxy; she had spent countless hours rolling down the grassy knoll with her cousins until their clothes were stained green and dirt covered their faces. She had shown her first sign of magic on this hill, accidentally summoning her shoes from the bottom when she refused to walk down and get them herself. She had received her very first Hogwarts letter up at the top, sitting with Lily and the Scamander twins. She'd kissed her first boy at age fourteen—Lysander, who was all tongue and groping hands, though later she lied and told him it was the greatest loss she'd ever had when he asked her how it felt.

But the hill as snot just a place of happy memories; it was also where'd she'd fallen and broken her arm, having to be carried back to Grandmum by her anxious cousins. It was where Freddie explained to her that he would be leaving for a whole nine months, which, to a girl of not even five years, felt like forever. The hill was where, just two weeks after kissing Lysander, he told her that he didn't want to be anything serious just yet—not boyfriend and girlfriend, because thirteen and fourteen was much too young for that sort of commitment. (He tried to kiss Lily just a few days later.)

Roxy wondered if, looking back on this moment, she would consider what was about to happen to be a good memory or not.

Lucy scuffed her boots against the ground, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jeans. Snow coated her hair and shoulder, and though she was not wearing anything heavier than a jumper, Lucy did not feel the cold. She merely grimaced, looking from Roxy's curious brown eyes to Lily's annoyed ones. Big girls were waiting for an explanation—why drag them out here into the cold if there was nothing at all to be said? Why would Lucy waste their time like that?

"Lily," Lucy said, holding her hands up in a praying motion; she bowed her head and mouthed silent words, having a—conversation?—with someone that was not there. The action made Roxy frown. Though some wizarding families did practise some form of muggle religion, the Weasleys had never been amongst that number.

Lily and Roxy exchanged uneasy glances, worried that their cousin had finally lost her mind for good. She'd dragged them all the way out here, in the cold, to have conversations with invisible beings? Had Lucy truly gone mad?

Lucy spoke out loud once more, her eyes brimming with determination. "Lily, they have spoken to you as well. They had tried to garner your attention, to get you to see them for what they truly are. They've revealed the truth to you—or at least used you to reveal the truth, which, in their eyes is very nearly the same thing. You have been chosen," Lucy said, frowning slightly, "though I couldn't tell you why. But," she paused again, tilting her head as if listening to someone before finally shrugging, "I only interpret what they say. I do not try to speak for them."

"Lucy, is there a point to this rambling, or are about to go completely off on Rox and me? 'Cause if so, I'd much prefer to just head back inside and have pudding instead." Lily crossed her arms, glaring at Lucy, who only shook her head and mumbled something about Lily not understanding, that no one would ever understand. "Yo, Lucy," Lily snapped, "what's going on here, oh darling cousin o' mine? What's wrong?"

Lucy ignored her in favour of rambling. "And you, Roxy, who has been so close to death these last few years. How hard it must be to hear the whispers in your ears and yet still struggle against them every day. To feel the hands of your past resting upon your shoulders and still be able to shake your head and say 'not me, not me, please not me!' How can you stand to feel the need to push so hard against what you know—what you've always known—in your heart that this can only be the truth."

Roxy had the urge to slap her cousin. How dare Lucy speak to her in this way, like she was so much smarter than Roxy and Lily, like she knew more and that somehow gave her the right to talk in such a condescending tone?

A wind began to pick up, tugging at Roxy's curls, biting at her nose and cheeks. The snow began to fall again, harder than it had that morning, costing the three girls in white, making them appear ghostly and ethereal. Roxy shivered violently against the sudden rush of cold.

"Lucy, what in the hell are you talking about? It's bloody freezing out here and all you wanted was to talk about your damn ghosts again? We could have done that inside!"'Lily raised her voice in order to be heard above the howling winds that had picked up.

Lucy shook her head. "Don't you see? Doesn't anyone else look at the world around them and see any further the than the bricks and the dust and the trees? Our world is changing before our very eyes and no one even cares! Unicorns are dying, the ghosts have taken to hiding their faces, the fae won't go near human settlements any more! But does anyone care, does the Ministry give a damn? Why am I only one voice screaming into a voice that appears to want to give nothing in response but empty promises and disappointment? Can't you just finally see the world for what it is? How many signs must they give you? How many times must they tell you?"

She pulled out her wand suddenly, saving it around. Lucy's eyes had grown big, her face pale and ashy. Her chest heaved up and down as she struggled to breathe. There was a blazing fury written across her face as the wind blew even more fiercely than belfry. Lucy looked like a girl possessed, wild and out of control.

Inhuman.

Roxy lunged forward to grab the wand from Lucy's hand, but the older girl only danced out of reach, laughing madly as she spun around and ran up the hill.

Roxy gave Lily a desperate look and the redhead nodded. They had to stop Lucy before she hurt someone, or even herself. They needed to get her wand away from her before something bad could happen.

"Lu, we don't quite understand," Roxy said in the most soothing voice she could manage, hoping to calm her cousin down enough to talk Lucy into relinquishing her wand. "Who is trying to tell us what, exactly? And why us, of all people? Why not Uncle Harry or Aunt Hermione or—or Mr Shacklebolt? Someone important, like they are, instead of two girls?"

Lucy narrowed her eyes, still shifting slowly up the hill to stay out of reach. "Their time is done," she replied in a voice that was clearly not her own. It sounded low, guttural, animalistic—it was the voice of a creature that promised danger if they threatened it. It was, above all else, not Lucy. "New players arrive, new characters reach the top of the hill," she giggled, taking another step back, "in order to begin their journey. New day! New day!"

She paused, wand raised in the air, nostrils flaring as 'Lucy' looked back and forth, eyes searching into the darkness for enemies only she could see. The girl glanced back at her cousins, lips curling to form a cruel smile.

"They're here! They're here, they're right here!" she scream, stabbing a quivering finger in the direction of Roxy and Lucy. "Pay attention to me! Listen to what I'm saying! They're right here in front of you! I brought them, I brought them—" She giggled again, a high-pitch sound that only further cemented how unhinged Lucy had become. "I brought them just for you! Aren't you proud of me? I've been trying so hard, and now here they are. New day! New day!"

Roxy reached upwards to her raving cousin, hoping that, if she could just grab hold of Lucy, maybe it would calm her down, make her kick back into reality once more. Instead, when she reached forward, there was the sudden feeling as if a force grabbed Roxy by the hair and threw her backwards, sending the nineteen year old sprawling into the snow.

"Roxy!" Lily screamed, torn between helping her cousin back up and getting Lucy's wand away from her. She turned to glare at Lucy. "Why in the hell are you doing this? What do you even want from us, you—you psycho?!"

Lucy—or whatever was controlling Lucy, if that truly was the case—tilted her head, considering the question thoughtfully, as though up until now, it had not really occurred to her why she dragged her cousins outside and was now ranting madly at the wind.

"Everyone is so blind," Lucy finally cried out sadly, holding her wand aloft once more. Lily was jerked backwards by an unseen force, hitting her head against the cold ground. Near her, Roxy was still struggling to sit back up, crouching and groaning in pain. "Everyone is just so blind!" Lucy yelled again. "Only I can see anything any more. Only I have eyes. Fire and ice! They're coming! They're on their way."

Lucy turned her wand on herself, a mad glint in her eyes. She ignored the cries and protests of her cousins, who suddenly found that they could not stand up when they tried to stop Lucy.

"Sectumsempra!" Lucy shrieked. Multiple lacerations appeared across her skin and began to bleed profusely. Lucy screamed loudly, a tortured scream that shook Roxy to her very core.

She would never forget that scream for as long she lived.

In the next second, it was completely silent. Lucy stood on the hillside, not moving. The wind died as suddenly as it had started and the snow was no longer falling over them, as if it had never even existed.

Lucy collapsed, falling to the ground in a crumpled heap, bloody, and did not respond when Lily and Roxy screamed her name.

"Lucy? Roxy? Lily?" Uncle Bill called, running across the grounds toward them. The two younger clambered to their feet, shaking from the cold and from something more; that had not been Lucy, not entirely. Lily and Roxy made eye contact, and they both knew in that instant that something—evil, pure evil—was inside of Lucy just a few moments ago. They also knew, almost instinctively, that it was gone (for) now.

"Are you girls okay?" their uncle asked, breathing heavily as he came upon them. Bill gave his nieces Bob a concerned glance, wondering why they were wet and shaking. Then his eyes fell on the rapidly bleeding form of Lucy and he gasped. "Is she—what—I mean—what happened to Lucy?" He didn't even wait for an answer before hurrying up the hill go scoop up his eerily still niece.

Roxy and Lily followed after him back towards the Burrow. Lily, tears pricking her eyes, took Roxy's hand in her own and leaned heavily on the shorter girl, sniffling with every few steps that they took.

"What happened?" Uncle Bill demanded again, craning his neck to look down at them. "Did she—did she do this to herself?"

Roxy's eyes flickered over to Lily. They couldn't tell the truth, or what they thought to be the truth—that something inside of Lucy had dragged them out here and ranted at them before attacking Lucy and disappearing into the nothingness. If they told him that, Uncle Bill would think that all three girls are completely mad.

"I, er, we're not really sure, to be honest," mumbled Roxy, avoiding looking at Lucy, who would not stir in their uncle's arms. "She wasn't making a whole lot of sense and then she cast—uh, I don't know what it was—"

"Sectumsempra," interjected Lily. Uncle Bill's eyes widened with fright at this one word and he stopped in his tracks to look down at them both very sternly.

"Hurry back to the Burrow, girls. Don't stop until you're inside. If anyone asks, I've taken Lucy to St Mungo's to be treated. Tell your grandmother that—that someone bad has happened and that Lucy is at risk. I need to—" he paused, staring down at his niece. "—take her now, if she'll have no chance at all. Please, girls, run as fast as you can. No matter what, don't stop, do you understand me? Do not stop."

They nodded, running off with their hands still classed together tightly. Behind them, Bill Weasley sighed and disappeared from sight. The only thing left behind were the prints of his boots that were quickly and quietly being filled back in by the returning snow.


	23. Roxy has interesting friends

"How is she?" Roxy asked when, hours later Uncle Percy Flooed back to the burrow. He, along with Aunt Audrey, Molly, and Grandmum, had hurried over to St Mungo's to meet up with Uncle Bill after the entire situation was explained—albeit a little incoherently—by Lily and Roxy.

Uncle Percy jumped, caught off guard by the sudden noise of his niece's voice. It was nearly three in the morning and he hadn't expected anyone else to be awake still.

"Roxanne?" he whispered, waving his wand to turn on the lights to blink confusedly at the nineteen year old. Roxy was huddled in a kitchen chair, wrapped up in one of Grandmum's quilts, with her hair spilling over her face, hiding her eyes and making her look similar to a feral animal. "What are you still doing up? It's very late, you know."

"Or very early," retorted Roxy, and then almost immediately shrugged, not up for having philosophical debate about time with her uncle. "Sorry for scaring you, Uncle Perce. I was waiting for _someone_ to come home—guess I should've turned on the light while I was sitting here, but, y'know, the dark is nice, too. Good for crying."

Uncle Percy observed that Roxy _had_ indeed cried recently, as not-yet-dried tear tracks still stained her cheeks, glimmering slightly against Roxy's dark skin. He stood awkwardly, separated from his niece by not only a table, but by his own uncertainty. Percy was never very good with females, and this included even his own wife and daughters; the idea of comforting Roxy right here, at almost three in the morning while his youngest daughter was surrounded by a team of Healers and was potentially dying as they spoke, absolutely terrified him.

After all, what could he say to her to assure the girl that everything was alright and was going to be alright, when he himself could not be sure that…?

Roxy was staring at him. Percy cleared his throat noisily and gave the young adult before him the most encouraging smile he could muster. From the questioning look in Roxy's eyes, though, it could be assumed that she was not convinced in the slighted by her Uncle Percy's façade.

"Is Lucy going to be fine?" Roxy asked again, carefully raking her eyes over Uncle Percy, taking in his wild hair and dishevelled clothing; the way his hands shook from several cups of poorly made coffee and how his mouth kept falling into a grimace when he thought she wasn't looking.

Then Uncle Percy shook his head, took a deep breath, and it was like he was a completely different person. Gone was the haggard expression, the worried frown lines on his brow, and it was almost as if he had not just spent the past six hours at St Mungo's.

"Lucy will be fine, Roxanne, don't you worry about her," Uncle Percy said, apparently trying to be comforting, though his words came out in more of a condescending whine. "She is going to need some time to rest obviously—losing so much blood can be risky in even the best of circumstances, so the Healers will want her to stay until they can ensure her long-term stability."

"How does bleeding _ever_ fall under 'the best of circumstances' exactly?" asked Roxy hotly. Her uncle had suffered through accusations of heartlessness that plagued his entire political career, but it was most apparent to Roxy now that Uncle Percy did really care about Lucy's condition—or he at least did far too good of a job of pretending that he was not overly bothered, which had the downside of making it look, especially to those who did not know him well, as though he couldn't give even the slightest shit about his own daughter.

"Obviously that's not what I meant, Roxanne," he replied, indignant and bristling. "I'm only just saying that the situation could be far worse than what it is at this moment, and we should all be very grateful that things _aren't_ as bad as they _could_ be."

"Don't really see how," muttered Roxy under her breath. She looked up at her uncle, scanning his face, wondering if Uncle Percy was actually telling the truth, or if he was just making Lucy's condition out to be better than it really was to keep her from crying again.

He was nothing if not a good politician, though; Roxy could not make anything of his relaxed expression. He was upset, obviously, but how upset was he _below_ the surface? How badly off was Lucy _really_?

Uncle Percy yawned loudly, stretching until his back gave a small pop. "I think I'll go to bed now, before my schedule gets thrown off any more than it already is." He gave Roxy a tense smile. "You ought to do the same, Roxanne. Don't you have work tomorrow? You don't want to go into the office exhausted, right?"

"Mm," she replied, but did not move from her seat.

Uncle Percy blinked owlishly at her before shrugging and heading up the stairs, leaving Roxy to sit by herself in the dimly lit kitchen, pressing her thumb into the edge of the table as she continued to wonder absently how Lucy was doing; the rest of her mind was too busy focusing on what Lucy had _said_ last night, when she'd been acting—hadn't she and Lily thought that Lucy was possessed?

 _You don't even think that ghosts are real,_ Roxy reminded herself, frowning. _Why would you think that one possessed your cousin? She's been unstable for years; maybe this was just the breaking point for her._

But she couldn't shake the image of Lucy's wild eyes and the way she had acted so unlike herself, ranting and raving before turning her own wand on herself. And where would she even learn a spell like _Sectumsempra_ , which Rose had explained—a shaky voice, and only after Roxy and Lily had promised to never repeat the word—that it was a very dark spell from their grandparents' time. It was the closest thing to an Unforgivable as one could get without going all the way; and even then, Rose said quietly, there were always debated brought up every few years to discuss whether or not it _should_ be bumped up to the same rank as an Unforgivable, which were punishable by life in Azkaban.

Roxy didn't think sweet, innocent Lucy was the sort to research dark spells to use against others, or herself. Lucy had just never been that kind of girl. She was a sweet Hufflepuff that mostly kept quiet and took pictures of trees.

So how was it that she had learned such a spell? And what had pushed it to use it against herself? Was Lucy truly deranged or—Roxy shook her head, not even wanting to consider the thought that had been so certain to her just last night. Possessed? That was silly to even think about; Lucy wasn't possessed, she was just in dire need of help, and if Roxy allowed herself to play fancy to such ridiculousness as the possibility of _ghosts_ taking over her cousin's body just to make Lucy hurt herself, it would do nothing to help ensure Lucy's recovery. In fact, it would probably only hinder any progress.

 _But what if something_ was _inside of_ _Lucy, controlling her? You felt so certain last night about it. What changed? Just because you stopped trusting your instincts and let what society tells you to be true, and to let them decide what the only possible explanation is? Shouldn't you investigate any and all explanations for what happened to Lucy, no matter how crazy they sound?_

Roxy needed sleep. Her thoughts were all jumbled up and were giving her a headache. Uncle Percy was right about at least one thing—three in the morning was not a time for deep contemplation of the state of her cousin's potential neurotic nature Three in the morning was a time for sleep.

She got to her feet, trudging up the stairs to where Grandmum was allowing Mum and Roxy to stay the night while they waited on news of Lucy. Roxy's mum hadn't really wanted to return to their dark flat while her niece was at St Mungo's, potentially bleeding to death, and Roxy had been far too distraught to take anywhere.

Most of the family had felt the same way and stayed as well.

The room that she and her mother were set up in was the old bedroom that was once her father's and Uncle Fred's, who had died eleven years before Roxy was even born. Seeing the faded wood where the sign that barred entry to their room once hung made Roxy shiver, remembering when she had become so convinced that the sign was _still_ up, and that a dark force was creeping from within the room to grab at her.

The place felt normal enough now, Roxy though as she crept inside and laid down on the makeshift bed, stopping only just long enough to kiss her mum's cheek. For a room that had been built for two boys who were now both deceased, their childhood quarters were decidedly _not_ haunted. In fact, other than a briefly shared uneasy look between mother and daughter before they first stepped in her earlier that night, there was not much of note about the bedroom.

Roxy sighed and shut her eyes, hoping sleep would come fast and easy. She didn't want to deal with being awake any longer.

* * *

"What is my favourite fellow female doing for lunch today?"

Roxy looked up to see Aniya standing just outside of Roxy's station, grinning wildly as she held up a small vial of green liquid and raised her eyebrows at Roxy.

"You _do_ know I'm the only other female intern here, right?" said Roxy with an amused smile, pushing aside her books and removing her goggles. "So calling me your favourite is a bit redundant. It'd be like saying Des is the tallest person named Desmond that I know."

"Oh well. You're still my favourite."

"Alright. So what's that then?" Roxy nodded at the vial, curious. The interns weren't supposed to handle finished and bottled projects—something about not being experienced enough to be trusted with such important products—so she wasn't sure where Aniya would have even gotten her hands on anything.

"Hair removal," replied the shorter girl, still wearing an easy grin. She nodded in the direction of where McGregor and his cronies were set up, their stations amongst the very first in the room to show off their high-ranking positions. "Three drops into a glass of pumpkin juice and everything starts coming out in clumps within the hours. And I do mean _everything._ " Aniya winked.

"You didn't?"

"I did!" Aniya looked quite proud of herself as she slipped the rest of the potion into the pocket of her robes. "I can hardly wait to see what happens—wonder if McGregor will get even _uglie_ _r_ when he's bald. If that's even possible."

Roxy giggled. "Aren't you worried that he'll suspect you, though?" she asked, imagining a bald McGregor screaming at the top of his lungs in panic.

"Why would he? I mean, nearly everyone here secretly—or not so secretly—hates him, and besides, you and I are both too short to even reach the shelves that they use to reach the potions."

"That's true," Roxy muttered, remembering the countless times she would need to call on one of the taller interns to get something down for her from a shelf where they kept ingredients. And the "finished potions" area of storage was even higher off the ground. "Wait, so how did you get that potion then?"

Aniya shook her head, smiling teasingly. "Has _everyone_ here just forgotten that we have _wands_? I can just summon the damn thing, if I really wanted to. And trust me, I _really_ wanted to."

"Oh." Roxy blushed; to be honest, summoning out-of-reach items hadn't occurred to her. It was probably a good thing she hadn't been sorted into Ravenclaw. Roxy probably would have gotten stuck outside of the common room for hours because she couldn't solve a simple riddle.

"It's okay, Rox. No one's expecting you to be the next Merlin or anything like that. And besides, none of the Ravenclaws seem to remember that's an option either." She jerked her head in the direction of William Carmichael-Li, who was manually gathering supplies and returning to his station again and again every time he ran out of room in his arms to carry it all.

Aniya rolled her eyes, smiling at Roxy like the whole situation was just one big laugh to her. Which, Roxy supposed, it probably was. Aniya rarely ever took things seriously. Sometimes, Roxy really did have to wonder how the other girl was ever placed into Hufflepuff; she was much more brash and abrasive than any badger that Roxy had met before.

"What's Roxy thinking about?" Aniya asked, leaning closely to tap Roxy on the arm and laughing when the other girl jumped. "Sorry, didn't mean to—you know—scare you."

Roxy remembered saying nearly the exact same thing to her uncle just nine hours ago while sitting in her grandmother's kitchen. "I was just wondering how a girl like you gets sorted into Hufflepuff of all places. I always thought that was the house for the docile, friendly bunch of doffers who could barely hurt a fly."

Aniya's brow creased for a second, but she could not keep the smile off of her face for very long. "Did you forget who won the House Cup for four of the seven years were in school together? And who came in second the other three times? I wouldn't necessarily say that docile is the most appropriate description of Hufflepuff." She bared her teeth in a mocking way, pretending to bite Roxy on the arm. "We 'puffs can be vicious little buggers when we really want to be. Loyalty before anything else, after all."

"I suppose that's true," Roxy said amicably.

"It is. But anyway—McGregor's future baldness and my amazing house aside—I wanted to ask about your cousin?"

"Which one?" Roxy asked with a smile. "I've got nine."

"Right, but I meant the one that works here. What's her name?"

"Rose?"

"Right. Her. Rose." Aniya crinkled her nose, making a small face, though Roxy was uncertain if it was out of disgust or not. There were plenty of people who could find Rose to not be the most likeable of people, but as far as Roxy was aware, Aniya had never even met her cousin. What could Rose have done to possibly offend Aniya before they were even properly introduced?

"What about Rose?" Roxy tilted her head, curious to hear what Aniya had to say.

"You two visited Professor Trelawney a little while ago, right?" Roxy nodded, bewildered by this seemingly complete change in topics. "And you visited her because of your other cousin? Lily Potter?" Another nod, this time less certain. How did Aniya know about Lily? Or that Rose and Roxy had gone to Hogwarts? Even their own family didn't know. "So what did Trelawney tell you and Rose? Did she, y'know, actually give you a prophecy?" Aniya leaned in, looking eagerly at Roxy. "I heard the last _real_ one she said was back in 2005."

Roxy paused, her brain buzzing noisily. 2005? _2005?_ Hadn't that been—when—the ghosts, when they all got up one day and disappeared without an explanation, leaving behind the initially confusing living, whose frantic search for answers eventually faded to a sense of contention within just a few short years?

"What did she say back in 2005?" Roxy asked, feeling hollowed out, her insides frozen with shock and the sense of unsettled nerves.

Aniya shrugged. "From what I heard, she was the first one who ever mentioned that all the ghosts were going to leave. No one at the time believed her—I mean, who would, right?—and once it finally _did_ actually end up happening, there was too much of an uproar about the whole situation to bother listening to one drunken old woman ramble on about how she'd known the truth the whole time."

"She knew about the ghosts and nobody listened to her?" Roxy asked, somewhat incredulous; she supposed it did make sense to doubt Trelawney's word. Up until the very end of their visit with her, it had been pretty obvious that Trelawney didn't know tea leaves from tadpoles.

"Guess so. But back in 2005, the whole idea _did_ sound rather ridiculous—at least until it happened, that is. Seemed pretty reasonable then, I bet. But anyway, what did Trelawney tell you and your cousin. I know she had to have said _something—_ didn't you, like, end up in the hospital wing at Hogwarts?"

"Only for a little while!" Roxy protested, feeling her cheeks grow warm from embarrassment. She didn't want anyone to hear about the fainting incident at Hogwarts—not her family, and _definitely_ not her co-workers.

"Right, but what did she tell you?" Aniya stressed, placing a hand on Roxy's shoulder and looking the other girl in the eyes. "It's important that you tell me _exactly_ what she said. And your cousin Lily—what did she tell you that would send you to Trelawney in the first place? You wouldn't visit someone like Sybill Trelawney for a cup of tea. So what did she say?"

Roxy shook her head. Why was Aniya pushing the issue so much? Surely she didn't believe the supposedly prophetic ramblings of a woman who had been confirmed time after time as being little more than a fraud?

 _But Trelawney and Lily did say nearly the same thing, the voice in her head reminded her._ Roxy tried to push the thought away, but she found it nearly impossible _not_ to focus on this one undeniable fact. Lily and Trelawney had never met—Lily was not a Seer and had no Seer blood in her—and yet, they both had said very nearly the exact same thing, within a week of each other, and both times occurred right in front of Roxy.

The situation could not be chalked up to mere coincidence, even she had to admit that; the details shared far too much in common to be the same situation accidentally played out twice in one week. Which left Roxy with only two options, didn't it?

Either the prophecy was legitimate and someone was trying to communicate with Roxy about ghosts and the potential end of the world, or she was suffering from some kind of mental break down and was experiencing hallucinations and other things that could never truly happen.

But if the second case were true, how would Aniya know about any of it? How _did_ she even know about it now? Had Rose been talking about Trelawney and Lily at work—and if so, why? What purposing did outing your potentially crazy cousin serve?

"Roxy?" Aniya tilted her head, giving Roxy a concerned and worried look. "What's wrong? C'mon, it's safe to tell me. I'm your friend, aren't I?"

"They talked about a prophecy," Roxy said slowly, hit by the sudden feeling that someone was controlling her brain, her mouth, her tongue—making her say things she did not want to say, or did not know _how_ to say. _Is this how Lucy felt last night?_ she wondered. _Am I about to pull my own wand out and try to curse myself?_

"A prophecy? About what?"

"About two girls who would be coming soon. They're going to bring the end in fire and ice. They're on their way, and because of them, everything is going to change forever. They're—they're—" Roxy found that there was suddenly no air in her lungs; she could not breathe, could not speak. She struggled to raise her hands to indicate to Aniya that she was choking, but it felt like someone had taken control of her body, because moving was painful and difficult and she was going to choke to death if someone didn't do something about it fast. She tried to scream, but no sound would come out, and her throat felt like it had been cut when she tried a second time.

Roxy felt a pair of thick arms wrap around her chest, contracting inwards, forcing air into her lungs. Her head began to buzz loudly, but whoever was holding her up kept pushing air into her lunged, forcing Roxy to breathe and stay conscious. She could not focus on anything except for the regular upwards shoving of flesh that was pushing on her and doing its level best to keep her from dying, quite like a heartbeat.

She choked, oxygen flooding back inside of her, and the tight grip around her finally loosened, letting Roxy slump forward a little. She was caught once more and easy back into her seat, heart still pumping wildly, her body struggling to catch up to the realisation that she wasn't dead—but nearly had been, given a few more seconds.

"You 'kay, Weasley?" It was Desmond's voice in her ear, and Desmond who moved his large hands to relax lightly on her shoulders. She had been too busy choking to notice him come up behind her to grab her around the middle and save Roxy from dying.

She gave Desmond a grateful smile but remained silent, as her throat felt scratched internally from making attempts to scream through her choking gags.

Desmond didn't seem to mind that she gave him no reply, though, judging from the way he patted her back—an oddly gentle motion for a boy as large as he was—and his face relaxed now that Roxy was not so likely to drop dead within the next couple of minutes.

"What'cha do you to nearly kill Weasley?" Desmond asked of Aniya, frowning at the tiny girl, who responded by merely sticking out her tongue, acting quite familiar towards the boy who was nearly three times her size.

"Just wanted to ask her a few simple questions," replied Aniya casually. "I wasn't expecting her to just start choking right in front of me, though. Glad you were here to save the day, Des."

"Makes me think you've never even seen a choking victim before, Niy," Desmond replied, frowning slightly down at Aniya. Roxy caught the look in his eye before it faded back into one of simple, mild, concern. He was telling Aniya to back off of something—and not just for not immediately jumping to help Roxy from choking to death.

Desmond and Aniya knew something. About her? Or about all the weird stuff that had started occurring to her ever since graduation?

Or perhaps she was reading far into things, seeing secret messages where there were none to be found, suspecting hidden agendas when the only real situation at hand was two friends who did not want to let their co-worker choke to death. Maybe they didn't know anything at all, and Roxy was only imagining things. Tricks of the light or a shadow over her eyes could do that sort of thing to a person; and besides, she had only just been saved from death a few minutes ago. Oxygen was still slowly trying to make its way back to her brain.

She probably hadn't seen anything at all.


	24. Don't go dying on me

It was a few weeks later that her mum suggested that perhaps Roxy would benefit from talking to someone at St Mungo's. Roxy was acting very stressed lately—no doubt because she _was_ stressed, and quite rightly so—and was suffering from near nightly frightening dreams of increasing intensity that left her screaming in terror, as well as often finding herself on the floor of Freddie's room, or else sprawled across his neatly made bed.

Mum had finally noticed that Roxy was not waking up in her own room when she went to check on her daughter one night and found Roxy not in the correct bedroom, but in the one next door. They'd had a long discussion about it afterwards, with Mum asking if, perhaps, proxy still had some unsettled feelings about Freddie's death; Roxy thought that notion was a load of crap, though she still could not give an explanation for why she was apparently moving around the house—though only to this particular place by night's end—during her sleep.

Roxy hadn't ever had a problem of sleepwalking until coming back from Hogwarts. She certainly had no desire to talk to a Healer about the situation at hand, knowing that they would only say the same thing that Mum said to Roxy now—that she was clearly not over the death of her brother, five years gone though it was, and was subconsciously acting out as a way of processing her emotions, which she had previously been accused of keeping bottled up.

She had read all the books on grief, which were given to her shortly after Freddie's death by her Aunt Hermione, who claimed that the volumes helped her adjust to the passing of her mother fifteen years ago. But Roxy was not Aunt Hermione and she did not _need_ some sort of grief counselling, especially not from some middle-aged wizard whose idea of 'helping' would no doubt involve some variation of asking her how she felt; wizards were not exactly known for their expertise of the concept of mental health. Certainly, they were far worse than their muggle counterparts.

"Are you sure?" asked Mum, giving Roxy a worried frown that made the nineteen year old girl want to smash something against the wall in frustration.

Why were they still going over this matter a full five years after Freddie's death? Why was she still being treated like she might fall apart at any moment, when in reality, all that Roxanne wanted was to have a normal, simple life. One that _didn't_ involve her mother consider Roxy to be required to talk to a stranger about her 'feelings', as well as one that did involve her cousin lying on a bed in St Mungo's with a poor chance at recovery.

"Mum, if I'd wanted to talk to someone about this, I would've asked after the accident, when I was _most_ likely to be messed up about it. I'm fine, I don't need to talk to anyone about being psychologically scarred for life, mostly because I'm _not_."

Mum smiled sadly, shaking her head. "You sound just like your father after _his_ brother passed. He would say the same thing any time one of us asked if he wanted to talk about things— _I'm fine, I don't need to talk to anyone about it, everything is okay_."

"Oh yeah, Dad was _totally_ fine." Her voice was bitter and more sarcastic than was appropriate, but Roxy couldn't bring herself to care. "That's why he'd end almost every night with an entire thing of Firewhiskey. That's why you'd have to drag him out of The Leaky at least once a week. That's why he fucking _KILLED_ himself. Because he was perfectly fine."

She slammed her hand down on the counter top, going completely red in the face as she practically hyperventilated from anger. Roxy's smashed fingers throbbed, but she could only focus on the low, humming roar in her ears.

Her mum, in contrast, was small and quiet, hurt rather than furious. Explanatory instead of accusatory, as Roxy was. "Why do you think I worry about you every time that you say you're fine? Whenever you say that, all I can hear is your father saying the same things to me, and I've already lost him and your brother. I can't lose you, too, Roxanne, not when you're the only family I have left. I won't lose you as well."

Roxy stopped entirely, her damaged fingers pulsating painfully, and the dish that she had been about to set down in the sink slipped from her hands and clattered noisily at the bottom of the sink. She had not thought about things from her mum's perspective, had not—they really were each other's only family left, and yet here Roxy was, saying such terrible things to her own mother.

"Mum," she said softly, moving across the kitchen to put a soft hand on her mother's shoulder. "Look, I'm sorry for yelling, but I promise that I _am_ fine. I wish Freddie and Dad were still here—of course, I do, as much as you do—but whatever is making me wander into Freddie's room night after night isn't going to be solved just by talking to a Healer for an hour every week. You don't need to worry about me, though. I'll be okay."

"If anything happens—"

"I'll talk to you about it immediately. I know. And the same goes for you, Mum. If you need to talk about anything, I'm always here. After all, I _do_ live just down the hall from you."

They shared uneasy smiles before Roxy turned back to the sink to finish cleaning the dishes; immediately, the smile slid off her face and her shoulders slumped. She was so tired of it all—waking up in the wrong room every day, receiving cryptic messages at random, and especially the fact that Lucy was _still_ at St Mungo's, unconscious and unresponsive as well as being force-fed bottles of Blood Replenishing potions every twelve hours because her wounds refused to heal properly and would open up once more at even the slightest of provocations.

And there was Lily, who was now going on five months pregnant, and Mum was a mess and Roxy was just always feeling so stressed out all the damn time, to the point where she couldn't take any more, she just wanted to—

Roxy wanted to leave. The thought came to her quietly and calmly, so naturally a progression of thought that she could not find herself questioning the sudden desire. She wanted to get out of this house and away from the way that being here made her feel. Her job paid enough to live on her own in a small apartment in one of the wizarding parts of London, or perhaps Lily wouldn't mind co-paying for a place, something that they had discussed towards the end of their Hogwarts days, but which had never actually come to fruition.

But, no matter what she chose, Roxy knew one thing for sure—she had to get away from the flat, from the shop, and from waking up every morning in the wrong room with no memory and no explanation for why she had ever left her own.

It was time for Roxy to move on and move out.

* * *

An envelope was taped to the wall of her station, with a note inside. Roxy pulled it off, scanning the handwriting to see if it matched any of the other strange messages she'd been receiving over the past couple of months. It didn't, but when she read the letter's contents, she almost wished instead that it had contained the scribbles of some lunatic.

This was, instead, so much worse.

Rox—

We have to talk. Something's happened to Kieran. He's at St Mungo's. Please write back, what is the muggle term called, ASAP? Anyway, answer NOW.

—Jo

Something had happened to Kieran? The words swam before her eyes, blurring at the edges when tears stung the corners of her eyes. She swiped at her face, a little thrown off by the sudden show of emotion that came from reading Jo's note. After all, she was not normal an emotional person when it came to anything. Perhaps it was the shock.

But what could have happened to Kieran that was bad enough to send him to St Mungo's? He wasn't in a high-profile, risky job like an Auror—Kieran had dropped out of that programme only three weeks in—or an Unspeakable. Kieran was just an entry-level office worker for the Department of International Cooperation. What could have—

"So what's up with Kanallakan? Starsha told me to deliver to your station, but it wouldn't be very nice of me to read your stuff without permission." Aniya stretched to see over Roxy's shoulder, making a concerned face when Roxy showed her the contents of the note. "Damn. Do you think it's serious? I mean, Bartley did write 'NOW' in all caps. That usually implies it's a little more serious than, say, the flu, doesn't it?"

Roxy covered her mouth to keep down the sob that suddenly threatened to escape her. She and Kieran had broken up nearly a month ago, but she had not written to him, Roxy realised in that moment, and she hadn't spoken to him like they promised to do. Two unopened, nearly forgotten, letters from Kieran were still sitting on top of her desk at home, waiting to be opened and read. What if the very last thing she'd ever said to Kieran was a clichéd break-up line?

"Why would anything happen to him? I don't understand," she asked, tears pooling and spilling down her cheeks. Roxy's body was wracked with quiet sobs as Aniya pulled her into a hug, patting Roxy's back gently. "It's not like he does anything dangerous—how could he be hurt enough to get sent to St Mungo's?"

"Maybe he's just come down with Dragon pox or something. That's usually pretty easy to treat, isn't it? But, actually, they mostly don't bother with treating you on-site unless you're in your, like, 70s or older. Dragon pox for an eighteen year old, fairly healthy male is more of the sort of thing that you would handle at home, for a week or two at most."

This only made Roxy cry even harder. Aniya was great at a lot of things, but comforting other people was definitely not one of her talents.

"What's going on here? McGregor's just told me that you two aren't doing your work? What's the meaning of this?" Starsha came marching up to them, hands on her hips as she stopped in front of the two girls. Behind them, hiding behind the wall of their stations, McGregor and Tolti were watching eagerly and snickering at the possibility of Aniya and Roxy losing their jobs.

"Roxy's not in a very good place right now," Aniya stage-whispered; Starsha only continued to glare at them, unimpressed by Roxy's near hysterics. "She got a note saying that a good friend of hers' is at St Mungo's right now, and those sorts of things are always pretty upsetting, aren't they? Maybe it would be good for her to take the day off, you know, to clear her head? I mean, being surrounded by all these potions when you're in an emotional state is never a good idea. What if something were to happen to her? And then Roxy gets hurt, so naturally she sues the company for compensation, and you get in trouble for letting her work anyway even when you knew it wasn't safe for her to be here today."

"Hmm." Starsha rubbed her chin thoughtfully, torn between having to write up a brief report to explain why Roxy had been let off for the day or potentially lose her job just to prove a point against a girl more than half her age. It was not a difficult decision. "I'll sign you out, Weasley," she said finally, growling incoherently to herself as Aniya helped Roxy slowly follow after their supervisor towards the front door.

McGregor and Tolti exchanged confused glances as Starsha walked past them to fill out the form for an employee to be released early with pay, biting her tongue and grimacing, her quill scratching loudly across the parchment.

Roxy was still sobbing loudly, only able to stand upright any longer because Aniya was holding onto her arm with a fierce grip, keeping the other girl from collapsing where she stood.

Every possible bad thing that could happen to someone now flashed through Roxy's mind, forcing her to imagine thousands upon thousands of ways that he might be hurt, or how he might die, and all that this did was make her cry even harder, to the point where the front of her shirt was stained clean through from tears.

"Hey, hey, Rox, it's okay, it's alright, I'm sure Kanallakan is fine. He's fine, he's okay, and it's probably, like, not even that big of a deal. I bet Bartley is just overreacting, yeah? Kanallakan isn't going to, like, die or anything like that."

"Aniya?" Roxy asked, laughing even through her tears, and shook her head at her friend. "You're absolutely shite at comforting people, do you know that? I really don't see why the Sorting Hat put you in Hufflepuff, you honestly seem more like a Slytherin to me. I mean, blackmailing Starsha? Not very badger-like, wouldn't you say?"

Aniya laughed as Starsha came over to them once more, handing Roxy the small scrap of parchment that would send her home. Aniya dropped her grip on Roxy's wrist just as the paper began to glow blue, and Roxy started to disappear from sight. Aniya waved good-bye right before she was replaced by the outside of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, which was mostly empty since the majority of its customers were currently at Hogwarts.

She didn't feel like heading upstairs, though. There was just something about her childhood home that no longer made it seem—friendly? Was that the right word? There was a strange vibe, a weird feeling about the place that made her feel uncomfortable and unwanted. She no longer belonged here, that much was obvious.

Besides, Jo had written to come to St Mungo's as soon as she could, and if Roxy was going to have a damn emotional breakdown in front of all of her co-workers, she might as well go visit the source of that emotional breakdown.

So, taking a deep breath to calm down and concentrate, Roxy twisted slightly on her heels, thinking of the faded mannequins that guarded the entrance to St Mungo's. A singular leaf remained behind where she had stood only moments before, unperturbed by passers-by or errant winds.

* * *

Roxy had not been inside St Mungo's since Freddie's accident, when she was pulled away from Jo's house an entire week earlier than had been promised to her; this was the first time she had ever been allowed to stay at a friend's house for any length of time and she was very excited about it. Unaware at the time of the severity of the situation, Roxy was quite miffed at her mother and spent the entire trip through St Mungo expressing her great dissatisfaction.

Stepping towards the glass, she leant in closely towards one of the mannequins on the 'other side', smiling at the one wearing a muggle dress that was probably older than her parents. "I'm here to see Kieran Kanallakan," she told the mannequin, who nodded in response and beckoned slowly for Roxy to step through the glass.

Entering St Mungo's was always a strange experience; it was quite a bit like the sensation of running through the barrier that hid Platform 9 ¾. She knew that she wouldn't hit the glass—because it wasn't really even there to hit in the first place—but this knowledge did nothing to keep Roxy from flinching and throwing her hands up at the last minute as she crossed over, leaving the muggle world behind her and stepping into the wizarding one.

St Mungo's was white—the walls, the ceiling, all of the seats, the robes of Healers and nurses that bustled by. In her dark grey robes, Roxy felt quite out of place, a disturbance, an errant drop of paint against a pristine white background.

She ducked her head, avoiding the stares from those who were waiting on a Healer—a man whose head was swelling to twice its size at a mercifully slow rate; a girl with antlers sticking from her head and a tail wiggling from her shorts; a four year old boy with Spattergroit being held by his exhausted mother.

A Welcome Witch cleared her throat noisily, calling Roxy over with a friendly smile and a wave of her wand, which let out small sparks at the end.

"Hello and welcome to St Mungo's. My name is Madhuri Burdak and I am your Welcome Witch for today. Do you need assistance with anything? Because I am here to help!" the Welcome Witch had a very vibrant smile that stretched all the way across her face and reached the corners of her eyes, nearly splitting her face in two. It was a bit too 'uncanny valley' for Roxy, who stepped hesitantly towards the desk.

"I was, uh, told that Kieran Kanallakan was admitted here recently?" Roxy was aware that her face was completely blotchy and her make-up was a total mess from crying, but it was very hard to care when all she could think about was Kieran lying in a bed, slowly dying with only strangers surrounding him.

"Kanallakan?" The Welcome Witch turned to her log book, which flipped obediently through the stack of pages that contained information on every single patient currently admitted to the hospital. "Hm, let's see…K—K—Ka, ah! Here we go, Kanallakan, Kieran. Spell Damage, fourth floor, in the Elda Djinn Ward, Room 428B. Would you like an escort up to the room, or do you think you can find it on your own?"

"Uh, I think I can find it by myself, thanks," Roxy mumbled, taking the charmed card with Kieran's information that the Welcome Witch gave her, smiling gratefully at the older woman; she willed herself not to start crying in front of this total stranger, to keep from breaking down in the middle of the waiting room that was filled with people watching her every move.

"Alright!" said Madhuri Burdak cheerily, giving Roxy another one of her dazzlingly bright smiles. "I hope you have a lovely day then!"

I'm at St Mungo's, Roxy thought to herself bitterly. How lovely do you think my day's really going to get when my reason for visiting means that someone is likely gravely hurt or dying. Roxy started to walk away, but only got a few steps from the desk when the Welcome Witch let out a small cry.

"Oh, ma'am, I nearly forgot! I need you to sign in for me here if you don't mind too terribly." She laughed. "Sorry, I'm a bit scatter-brained today, apparently, you're not the first person this has happened with. Here you go, yes, just sign right here. Yes, full name, please. Alright, yep, and here is an ID with your name. Just stick it on your robes there so everyone can see it, and don't worry, it's charmed to stay for as long as you're here. Have a nice day."

Roxy took the conjured identification, placing it on top of her robes, where it glowed bright yellow for a second and warmed the skin underneath before dulling and sticking itself to her clothes. Roxy could not find the edges of the tag even when she ran her fingers over it. The tag had become one with the clothing. It was weird to see the flash of white on top of her dark grey robes every time she moved her head.

"Er, thanks," she said, moving away from the desk once more, walking quickly in case the overly cheerful Welcome Witch forgot something else. That woman was much too happy for Roxy's liking, and she wanted to just put as much difference between herself and the front desk.

* * *

Kieran's room was easy enough to find, located only two metres down the hall from the door of the stairwell.

A few of the ancient Healers whose painting hung on the walls called out to Roxy, commenting on how to best "remove the ruddy dark colour from your skin, girl", but Roxy chose to ignore them in favour of pressing on to Kieran's room.

A small painting of a sleeping woman in her late sixties—presumably Elda Djinn—hung on the wall next to the room where Kieran had been placed.

When Roxy placed her hand on the door handle, the woman in the portrait woke with a start, looking around blearily before she finally noticed Roxy standing there.

"Oh," Djinn said, yawning and squinting down at Roxy. Even in the painting, one could see the leathery folds of her dark skin, the wrinkles around her eyes, the spots that crisscrossed her hands. "Hello, dear. Have you come to visi' tha' poor boy they stuck in 'ere this morning?"

Roxy nodded, and the door unlocked itself with a small click. The old woman gave her a toothy, sleepy smile, already settling back into her chair to fall asleep once more, her job done.

"Poor thing," mumbled Djinn quietly, her words muffled by a yawn. "Don't know if they'll be able t' save that one. Too far gone if you ask me. We certainly couldn't 'ave 'elped 'im in my day. Possibly 'e's not ev'n wort' saving in t' firs' place."

Roxy stopped again, hand still resting on the handle though she did not twist it open yet. "You know what happened to Kieran? You can tell me what happened to him?"

Djinn nodded, her eyes drooping further shut with every passing second. "Brough' 'im in early this morning. Bloody all ove', jus' like the girl from a few weeks ag', don' know if she'll be like to make i' ei'her."

Djinn was referring to Lucy, but that made very little sense, since Lucy had, either by her own free will or by a force out of her control—Roxy's judgement was still out on that one—attacked herself with a terrible dark curse. But, it could be argued, Lucy might have been under stress or was suffering from some form of mental degradation. Kieran did not, and never had for as long as Roxy knew him, suffered from any form of psychosis or anxiety, certainly not enough to turn his own wand against him.

Had he attacked himself, though? Was it possible that Roxy did not know her ex-boyfriend as well as she had thought? Or was someone else out there taking control of people and making their assaults look like they had been performed of the volition of the victims, as a means of escaping detection? If Kieran had done if of his own free will, then the question at hand was—why? And Lucy, too—why would she do something like that to herself as well? What was the connection between them both?

It just didn't make any sense, Roxy thought, twisting the handle on the door. It wasn't reasonable that two completely different people would be admitted with the exact same injuries so closely together unless a third party was involved.

But maybe the lack of reason was the most plausible explanation. If someone wanted to avoid drawing attention, but still up their victim count, wouldn't it make more sense to pick victims who seemingly had very little to tie them together? With no obvious motive, it would difficult—if not entirely impossible—go even spot a pattern.

Lucy didn't do this to himself. Someone had made her. And the same was true of Kieran; he would have had to be forced into using dark spells. The question at hand was, who was behind the attacks?

Or what was?


	25. Molly gives some (good) advice

December began with eight centimetres of snow and Roxy nearly slipping on the icy stairs of the flat when she stepped outside to keep herself from screaming bloody murder at her own mother. It wasn't that she didn't love her mum, but life could be very stressful when all Roxy ever heard any more was concern about her mental health and queries as to whether or not she knew anything more about Kieran and Lucy's conditions.

The Healers were not being reassuring. Statements like "extent of injuries" and "we just want you to be prepared for the worst possible outcome" were thrown around quite a bit in the last few days, which Roxy took to mean that the situation was not only incredibly bleak, but that survival was damn near impossible, and it was very likely that she would lose both her cousin and a very good friend before Christmas time.

The thought made her even more irritable than usual. Not that she was naturally a very cheery person, but still; Roxy was not normally the type to snap at her own grandmother, and Roxy had done just that only yesterday when Grandmum Weasley asked if perhaps Roxy wanted a ride home for the night since St Mungo's would be closing soon.

Lucy was now starting her twentieth day at St Mungo's; Kieran, his sixth. Neither were showing strong signs of recovery and their families were both being prepared for the most likely result of their time at St Mungo's—that nothing could be done to save them. That two funerals would be planned and held before the end of the month.

Roxy visited her cousin and friend every morning before work and stayed with them until visiting hours were over every night. She had the path to their room memorised to the point where she could walk it with her eyes shut and every single one of the Healers and Welcome Witches and mediwizards—and even the morning and nightly custodial staff—recognised her on sight. "That Weasley girl", the one who—even more so than the parents of the two victims—refused to give up on a possible being found or some form of progress being made.

Mum said she was obsessing; Rose said she was attempting to cope with the possibility of death; Uncle Percy said it was because Roxy was afraid of losing them just like she'd lost Freddie and Dad. Everyone in her family apparently had an opinion about why she spent all of her free time at St Mungo's, as though it were not enough for Roxy to simply just want to spend every possible moment she could with Kieran and Lucy, in case something were to happen to them and they passed, leaving Roxy behind.

Her family could be many things—annoying as all hell was just one of those traits that defined Weasleys as a whole.

* * *

Snow lightly dusted Roxy's hair and shoulders; she stood on the top step of the stairs leading up to their flat and her fingers were wrapped tightly around the cold metal bars of the railing as she surveyed the street below her. How was it that a place that, up until recently, had been the greatest Roxy ever knew was now a land of achingly too-familiar sights that made her feel sick to her stomach? Her home, her childhood—all of it tinted now with a sharp edge that was burnt in the corners and smelled of fire and death.

Inside, Mum was puttering around in the kitchen, waiting, no doubt, for Roxy to come back inside. She was doing that sort of thing a lot more as of late, hovering over Roxy yet staying just far enough away that Roxy could not outright call her mum out for her overly attentive nature without coming off as a paranoid.

It was driving Roxy up the wall, always seeing someone watching her just out of the corner of her eye, making sure that Roxy, too, was not about to lose it, to go crazy just like Lucy and Kieran. She wanted it to stop—all these damn looks that everyone was giving her every time she walked into a room. Her mum's insistence on keeping Roxy sane was, ironically, only cementing Roxy's building paranoia.

This was why she had begun the process of looking for empty flats in the wizarding suburbs of London. She didn't desire to go _completely_ muggle—the idea of not even being able to magically clean and organise her things, or to set the dishes to wash themselves, was terrifying to her—but Diagon Alley was simply just no longer the place for her. Every time that she closed her eyes now, all that Roxy could see was the destroyed wreckage of her childhood neighbourhood and home, remnants of the terrifying visions that haunted so many of her dreams as of late.

Lily had expressed an interest in looking around for a new place along with Roxy though so far nothing was actually planned out about visiting anywhere or discussing prices and co-paying and all those other things that Roxy was pretty sure were needed for moving into a new home. It really _was_ just like in Roxy's sixth year, when Lily had waxed poetic for weeks about the freedom of living on their own, but never actually contributing any real works towards achieving their goal.

"Roxanne?" Mum stuck her head out the door, wrapped up in several blankets and looking exactly every single one of her fifty-one years. "Audrey's invited us over for breakfast if you're interested. Molly will be there and—and they'll be stopping by to visit Lucy. Do you want to go?"

Roxy was still being handled with kids' gloves; she was a fragile, easily broken item to her family members, teetering on the same edge as her cousin.

"Sure, Mum," Roxy replied breezily, turning from the railing. She could pretend to not understand the underlying motive of a 'family breakfast'. And besides that, she was quite cold from standing outside in only a thin jumper and jeans. "I haven't talked to Molly since I was at her house last time we had a 'Weasley girls' weekend'. Ended less spectacularly than expected, but that's family, I suppose."

"Alright." Her mum sounded hesitant. "Come in here and take a quick shower and we can floo over there." She disappeared back inside, shutting the door behind her with a small bang against the wooden frame.

Roxy sighed and looked down across the snowy street that laid below her, wondering if her dreams of death and destruction could ever possibly come true. Could there really be a day that she would return here, to Diagon Alley, and barely be able to recognise anything—not the store, the flat, The Leaky Cauldron, or the home of that nice couple a few houses down with their new baby?

Was all of this truly destined to end so suddenly? And if so—what could bring about such an apocalypse to her childhood home?

Roxy didn't know the answer, settling instead for heading back inside.

* * *

Molly Diane Weasley was twenty-seven years old, 160cm, and of a (mostly) appropriate weight for someone of her height and athleticism. She had dark red hair and soft brown eyes. She worked at the Ministry as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries and was in a long-term relationship with a man named Peter Bartoli. She showed, as of now at least, no signs of wanting to marry him anytime soon, much to the frustration and dismay of her mother, Audrey. A Hufflepuff, Molly was friendly and helpful; she also greatly enjoyed chess and loved to play with Uncle Ron for hours, when she could be pulled away from her work.

Roxy thought that her cousin Molly was pretty okay, as cousins went. Molly could be a bit uppity and act like she knew more than others just because she was older, but for the most part, she was pretty decent. Certainly, one could call her stable. Steady. Practical and predictable. The opposite of Lucy in nearly every way.

"Good morning Roxy," Molly said politely after she opened the front door of her parents' house. Molly no longer lived at home—and had not in quite some time, being more of the organised sort that had a plan for their future since before even entering Hogwarts—but she was helping around the house and with her parents now that so much of Aunt Audrey and Uncle Percy's time was being swallowed up between rushing between work and St Mungo's.

"How's your mother hold up, Molly?" Roxy's mum came up behind her, reaching past her daughter to give Molly a gentle smile and a firm hug. Molly stepped inside to let her aunt and cousin into the house and escorted the two past the foyer, towards where the dining room was located.

Of her many uncles, Roxy had spent the least time around uncle Percy, or his wife. They were both high-level Ministry employees—in fact, uncle Percy was running for Minister next year—both of whom spent the majority of their time at their jobs. This meant that Molly and Lucy. Had been shuffled between relatives for a large portion of their childhood.

Roxy remembered having shared a bedroom with both of her cousins one time in particular because neither of their parents was around to pick them up by the time they were meant to go to bed. Lucy had started crying, which—to five year old Roxy—was amongst the scariest things she'd ever seen, considering that Lucy was nine at the time, and nine years were "big girls" that weren't supposed to cry about anything.

She was quite certain that it was this sort of upbringing that had played a part in the general nature of both daughters, as contrasting as they were; independent, "do it myself" Molly that never asked for help from anyone compared to helpless, hapless Lucy that always needed someone to lean on lest she fall down and find herself unable to get back up.

"Roxy? What's going on in that head of yours?" Molly smiled at Roxy, motioning for her to sit down at the dining table, which had been set up for breakfast.

Roxy blushed, staying where she was embarrassed by the fact that she had been unaware that she'd even lost focus. "Sorry, Mol. I've been..." She sighed. "You know how I've been. It's hard to think about anything in particular. You lose interest so quickly in everything around you, get distracted far more easily than you used to."

"You're scared for them." It was not a question to be thought over, but rather a statement. A known fact. The truth.

"Yes."

"Perhaps—" Molly turned to look at aunt Angelina. "I think that Roxy and I should talk in private for a little while. You know, cousin to cousin." She flashes Roxy's mum an encouraging smile, and the older woman nodded. Molly knew how to talk to adults—she could be just as reasonable as they were, twisting her behaviour and words until they agreed with her. After all, Molly had practically been an adult since she was eleven years old. People trusted what she said.

Molly put a hand on Roxy's back, escorting her deeper into the house, closer to where Molly and Lucy's childhood bedrooms were located. Roxy wondered what her cousin wanted to talk about, but just as she opened her mouth to ask, Molly stopped a few feet from her old room, pausing in front of an old photo hanging on the wall.

It was one of the dozen or so photographs located around the house, mostly capturing moments of the two sisters over the holidays, their arms thrown around each other, grinning at a camera; these pictures, Roxy remembered, were not taken by Uncle Percy or Aunt Audrey, nor hung by them either. Her uncle and aunt were not sentimental people. It had been a cousin or a friend who took these photos, and Molly who hung them. She probably knew the story behind every single photograph in this house.

The photo in particular that they were standing in front of was of the twelve cousins; it must have been at least a decade ago that this was taken, because Dominique was still in the photo and she kept smiling and laughing, instead of looking like the sort of girl who was about to throw herself into the Thames a few days after her nineteenth birthday. She looked _happy_. And Freddie, too, no more than fifteen here, one arm around James and the other holding a rubber haddock.

"Remember this?" Molly asked, running a hand in front of the portrait of the twelve Weasley cousins, a wistful smile curling her lips. "Christmas of '18. I was a seventh year then. You were only, what—nine?" She tapped the Roxy of the photo, who was the smallest one, standing in the very centre of the picture, surrounded by all of those older and taller children. "And Lucy...she was only a third year. Still a little kid."

The Lucy. From the photograph was leaning against Louis; at thirteen, they were both of a similar height, Lucy. Just a fraction of a centimetre taller. It was the year that Lucy had dyed her hair, and this made them look almost like twins, two strawberry blonds hanging on each other, sharing a private joke that no one else in the whole world would ever understand.

"I remember that Christmas. Being so bloody dramatic about it because it rather felt like a—a stepping stone, just another mark in the story of my life, the end of a chapter, yet the continuation of a tradition that I felt was rather childish. It was my last Christmas. As a Hogwarts students, but here I was stuck with all of my bratty little cousins." She winked at Roxy. "Sometimes I wish we could return to moments like this. Domi and Freddie still alive, Lucy. Not at St Mungo's, and the rest of us not scrambling around like ants, a bunch of big messes trying to figure ourselves out with no hope of ever finding the answers."

This made Roxy blink in surprise and turn to stare at Molly. She had always thought of her older cousins as one of the very few organised and well put-together people that existed in this world. But the idea that Molly did not see things in the same way threw her for a loop. If even _Molly_ didn't feel in control of her own life, how was _Roxy_ supposed to manage?

"You and Vic always seem to know what you're doing," she replied, watching the younger versions of her family members make faces at the camera. "Vic's married, she has kids and a nice job. You've got peter and your Ministry job. To me, you two have _always_ been the example of put-together and well prepared. I thought it was intimidating, really, how much of your life you two had under control. I could never pull that off."

Molly chuckled. "You thought Vic and I are put-together? Merlin's pants, Rox, we're a couple of regular kids who're gonna mess us sooner or later, same as you. Remember when Vic panicked because she thought that Teddy was going to propose to her, so she dumped him instead? Or when I tried to bake a cake for Granddad's birthday and nearly blew up the kitchen at the Burrow? Hell, just a few weeks ago, I was discussing with her about my inability to let peter even _propose_ to me, let alone talk about getting married or starting a family. I'm less prepared for that chapter of my life than Rose and Albus, and they're six years younger than I am. So this idea of being mature and suddenly knowing all of the answers in life? Trust me, it doesn't really exist."

"Are you _supposed_ to be making me feel worse than I already am?" Roxy asked glibly, sticking her tongue out at Molly.

"No, just showing you that it's okay not to have all the answers. It's okay if you don't know what's going to happen next or how to handle all the crazy things that life might throw at you. It's just always going to be this way, do you understand? Nobody has the 'answers' because we're all still trying to figure things out for ourselves. That's just how life works. So if—if something were to happen to Lucy or Kieran, just keep in mind that we're all trying our hardest to make sure they stay safe and stay alive. But sometimes, these things are out of our control, and the important thing is to learn from what happens to you."

"But if they die and the Healers didn't do everything they could—

"They are trying everything they know to do, Rox. The Healers are trained professionals—they've studied a million and one possibilities of what might happen to someone, and they're going to use every bit of knowledge they have to keep Lucy and Kieran alive for as long as possible. Unfortunately, just because you want someone to get better doesn't always mean they will. And we have to be ready in case that's what happens. In case they...in case they die."

Roxy didn't understand how Molly could say these things, how she could talk about her own sister dying without a hint of emotion. "she's your sister, Molly. How can you be okay with this?"

"I'm not okay with it." Molly shook her head. "it'll break my heart if Lucy dies. I love my little sister more than anything else in the world and I would never want anything to happen to her. But it's part of being an adult to recognise that, if Lucy passes, at least she won't be in pain any more. She won't have to suffer any longer. And it'll hurt for a long time—you know that you've lost more people than I have and at a much younger age, and you know what it's like. But I—we all—need to be ready to adjust to a life without her here."

Roxy fixed her eyes once more on the photograph, watching the younger version of herself grinning up at the camera, holding up one of her Christmas presents—a brand new Firebolt 2800 that was today sitting in the broom shed at the Potter house, untouched in quite some time. She looked, for all appearances, to be a normal, happy nine year old girl.

"Molly, Roxy, I have pancakes ready in the dining room! You, too, Percy, time for breakfast. I won't have you skipping out on a meal for the second day in a row! Breakfast is important."

Molly gave Roxy a dim smile, looking not happy so much as she seemed...okay. Ready to handle anything. "C'mon, let's go have pancakes and then we can visit Lucy, yeah? She'll be fine, Rox. I mean, for one thing, she's Lucy—a Weasley through and through. And you know us Weasleys, we never give up. So stop frowning and let's hurry before all the syrup's gone. The pancakes are a little dry without any and Dad's started a notorious habit of trying to steal it all before anyone else can have any."

* * *

A nurse was changing the bandages of both patients when Aunt Audrey opened the door, following by her daughter and youngest niece. Mum had opted to stay downstairs in the lobby, explaining that hospital rooms made her nervous, which was understandable, considering how many times she had ended up in one from various Quidditch injuries over the years.

"Hello Ms Kosaraju," Roxy said, giving the nurse a friendly wave. Ms Kosaraju was the usual morning nurse, and Roxy had gotten into the habit of buying her a cup of tea every morning from the gift shop downstairs. She handed the older woman her tea, receiving a grateful look in return.

"How are they doing today?" asked Aunt Audrey, looking worriedly over to where her daughter was strapped to a bed, unconscious and looking—if possible—worse than ever.

Kieran didn't seem to be doing very much better; his cheeks were sunken, his skin was sallow. They were quite similar to two sleeping skeletons, just one small jump from St Mungo's to the grave. Roxy's heart twitched to see them both looking so terribly. How would she able to handle losing either of these two?

Kieran's younger sister, Kara, was sitting in a chair next to his bed, clinging to her brother's hand, stroking his forehead. Roxy couldn't look in her direction, seeing too much of herself in the fifteen year old girl, who was trying so desperately to keep her older brother alive, no matter what anyone else said.

Her parents had let her spend the weekends away from Hogwarts to be able to spend as much time as she could by her brother's side, in case the worst possible scenario were to happen.

"Mr Kanallakan is showing a quite excitable amount of brain wave activity whenever we scan him, I can tell you that." Ms Kosaraju waved her wand over Kieran's head to bring up a blue, glowing model of his brain, which kept sparking, lights running up and down the various parts of his brain, moving far too quickly for Roxy to make any sense of it. "He's clearly fighting to stay alive, despite the extent of his injuries. This is a young lad who is clearly not ready to give up just yet."

Kara looked up hopefully.

"And my daughter? How is she faring?"

Kieran's brain was replaced by a model of Lucy's. It was duller, with far too many patches of yellow covering large areas; the glow of her brain flickered from time to time, blinking out for longer moments of time.

"Ms Weasley is also trying, and she seems to be responding to the potions that we started giving her last week, but..." Ms Kosaraju took a deep breath. "Well, it would seem that her brain wave activity has still slowed dramatically, even more so than our most critical of assumptions based off the charts we made to mark her progress. It's worrying us that, despite all the _physical_ improvement she's showing, her brain has appeared to improve very little, if at all."

"What does that mean?"

"Well," Kosaraju replied, sighing, "it means that while Lucy could potentially recover and wake up at any point in time, she may not be _Lucy_ any more." the three Weasley females exchanged confused expressions. "She could be physically healthy—her wounds would recover and it would be like she never got hurt at all. But her brain might be gone...or at least parts of it. Her ability to rationalise or sympathise or recall information; any of it could suffer irreparable damage that disallows her from ever living a normal life again. I believe the muggles refer to this as being a 'living vegetable'. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing how badly she might be until Lucy wakes up and we can perform cognitive tests on her."

Roxy turned to glance at her cousin, wondering how life would change if Lucy woke up...wrong. She wasn't sure what vegetables had to do with it, but Roxy could not picture bubbly, imaginative Lucy sitting still all day, not responding or reacting to anything. It would be a fate that Lucy herself would consider worse than death.

Aunt Audrey, a half-blood witch with a muggle father, frowned at the term 'vegetable' pursed her lips and thought intently about what Ms Kosaraju had said. "What are the chances that she won't be so bad that she couldn't function on her own? Like, say, if she didn't have any serious mental deficiencies—what are the odds of that happening?"

Ms Kosaraju ran her hands through her hair, sighing deeply once more. "I couldn't tell you for sure, Mrs Weasley, but the odds of your surviving at all are still much lower than we hoped for at this point. I just...i suspect—though the Healer might have information that contradicts me—that your daughter may end up spending the rest of her life in the Janus Thickey Ward."


	26. There are no perfect heroes

Roxy woke to find that the flat was empty. The clock chimed—ten times, and then there was only silence once more, except for the sound of her own tired breathing. She heard no clattering in the kitchen or footsteps down the hall, both noises that could be found filling the flat at any point in the day, their home was so small and cramped. It had truly never been meant for four people, and even now, two people filled up the space more than was comfortable.

"Mum?" she called out, but as expected, there was no response. Roxy was home alone, but perhaps her mother had left a message somewhere, indicated where she might have gone. Mum liked to do that, in case Roxy needed something from her.

Creeping out of bed, Roxy bent down for her slippers, overtaken by a sudden, deep chill. London was drowning in winter, with more and more snow falling every day and the temperature never rising enough to be able to melt what had fallen the day before. Snow was piling up so high that even the children of Diagon Alley were tired of the endless snowballs fights and snow angels and snow people and any of the other dozen things that usually made the winter time enjoyable.

She headed into the kitchen; taped to the fridge was a note from her mum, reading:

 _Leanne's having her twins. Went to help Katie and the midwife. Lee and Patrick will probably be coming over to the flat in a few hours while we wait for the babies—you know how boys and newborns are._

 _X0—_

 _Mum_

"Oh," Roxy said, not really sure what else to say. Her god-sister had been pregnant for what felt like forever, but now that the due date was actually _here_ and the babies were actually coming, it was strange to imagine Leanne being a _mum._ And her husband—Colin Creevey, the eldest of the Creevey children—was now going to be a _dad_. It had only been two or three years ago that he would tug on Roxy's curls and sneak her a glass of Firewhiskey at parties when no one was paying attention, and now, he was about to have two little children to raise. It just wouldn't process internally, no matter how many ways she tried to picture it. She could not see her god-sister and Colin Creevey as parents.

Roxy shook her head, at a loss for words as she stumbled back towards her bedroom, looking for clean clothes to wear after she took a shower. If her god-father and god-brother were going to be coming over, she wanted to pick the place up for them at least a little bit. After all, when was the last time Uncle Lee had even come to visit the shop or the flat? At least a few years, hadn't it been? And she hadn't seen Patrick since he graduated three years ago and moved to the States as part of a semi-professional Quidditch troop that performed stunts and tricks wherever they could for a meagre salary.

After showering and changing into a fresh set of clothes, Roxy wandered around the flat, Banishing various items back to their proper spot, sending the dishes to wash and settle themselves into the cabinets, and wiped the windows and carpets clean with a wave of her wand.

Sometimes, or rather all the time, it was really nice to be able to do magic for various household chores. Roxy couldn't imagine trying to do any of this by hand, the muggle way. It would have taken her _hours._

With nothing else to do until someone—be it, Uncle Lee or Mum—came over, Roxy decided to head downstairs to see if Anne needed help with anything. With the Christmas shopping season beginning to pick up a little, a fourth and fifth part-time employee was added to the staff to help with the sudden increase in owl orders. Anne would probably appreciate a little extra help around the shop.

There were five full-time employees that ensured that Weasley's Wizard Wheezes ran as efficiently as possibly. They were full-time because Mum had worked out with Uncle Ron who, of the more permanent nature, were the hard, dedicated workers that would be sure to last for more than just a few months before quitting in protest.

Anne, the eldest, ran the shop, handling expenses, tracking packages, ordering and restocking products, hiring new employees that were run by Mum, and generally making sure that the shop didn't fall apart.

Katie and Esther handled the check-out and sales, keeping track of the money and encouraging customers to spend that extra sickle wherever they could. The two women were great at talking to a hesitant mother who had wandered in just looking for a joke wand and convincing her to depart with a year's supply of Puking Pastilles and a boxing telescope.

Skye was the resident potioneer, and had been before Roxy was even in Hogwarts; Lucas kept track of customers to make sure nothing was stolen and that any broken products were paid for in full by the guilty party. These five, along with the five part-time employees, kept the shop in business, allowing Angelina to collect the family's profits and handle the company board without ever having to step foot into the store itself, something that Mum had not done since Dad's death.

"Hey, it's Foxy Roxy," laughed Nico when Roxy opened the door that separated the shop from the flat. "How're you doing today, Foxy Roxy?"

Roxy only rolled her eyes at his antics. Nico was a home schooled half-blood a year younger than she was, and thought he was a blessing to any female who came near him. Other than that—and his poorly misconstrued belief that he was in the slightest bit funny—Nico was decent enough in the sense that Roxy didn't _always_ want to punch him in the face.

"Are you guys particularly busy today?" Roxy asked Nico, peeking through the curtains to see two young boys—both pre-Hogwarts age, around seven and eight years old—rifling through 'Shrieking Umbridge' dolls.

"Not yet, thankfully. Give it another week, though, and we'll be so swamped, there won't be room enough to swing a kneazle, let alone move around. Lucas'll have fun keeping track of everyone _then_ , won't he?" Nico laughed and continued placing price tags on the wide array of merchandise in front of him.

"Do you think she would appreciate my help at all?" Roxy knew this shop better than anyone else. Her entire childhood had consisted of exploring the place and giving everyone and anyone who asked a tour of the whole shop. Roxy knew where any product was without even having to think about it. Weasley's Wizard Wheezes had always felt just like an extension of her home—a big toy store located just downstairs.

If she left Diagon Alley— _when she left—_ it would mean also leaving this place behind.

"Don't think she'd say no if you asked. I mean, you are kinda her boss. Or, you will be at some point at least." Nico used a roll of spellotape to stick a tag marked with the words 5 galleons to his cheek.

"Boss?"

"Yeah. It's _Weasley's_ Wizards Wheezes, innit? And you're a Weasley. The only child of the guy that opened this place to begin with." The term _only child_ stung, but Roxy let it go. "The shop's almost your birthright, wouldn't you say? Your inheritance?"

"I suppose."

To be honest, the idea of _owning_ the shop hadn't really crossed Roxy's mind. It was always just there, as much a part of her life as her messy curls or her love of potions. But to imagine herself one day running the place—well, hadn't she dreamed of doing that very thing when she was a little girl? And Nico had a point, it practically _was_ her birthright to run the place.

Roxy stuck her head through the curtains once more, looking around for Anne so she could ask about helping when she spotted Uncle Lee's greying dreads outside the shop. The bell chimed and, below where Roxy stood, her god-father and god-brother stepped inside, looking around at all the colourful items, listening to the hissing and whirring and chirping, watching as bubbles floated past and refuse to pop, instead letting out a variety of smells that were both sweet and disgusting, depending on what they were near at the moment.

Roxy moved forward to lean over the balcony, waving at Uncle Lee. "Hello!" she called out, making her god-father look up in her direction and wave. Both of the Jordans made their way over to the staircase that would take them to the staff area.

"Roxanne Weasley. How is my favourite god-daughter?" Uncle Lee asked when he made it to the top step, enveloping Roxy in a hug. He pulled away just enough to look her over, smiling cheekily. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you've grown since I last saw you. Are you any taller, my Roxanne Weasley? Or is this old man just getting shorter every year?"

"I'm still as short as I've always been, Uncle Lee," Roxy replied, giggling. "it must just be you."

"No, no, it cant be! Tell her, Patrick, tell little Roxanne Weasley that she _must_ be taller. Don't you think she looks it? Even a centimetre or two, she has to be taller."

"I dunno, Dad," said Patrick, shrugging. He had a slight American accent now, Roxy noticed; that vague every-man accent that you could hear on any muggle film or television show. "Roxy's still the same little kids as she was when I left. Maybe you're starting to see things. "He smiled tightly when he said this, to indicate that he was only half joking.

'Ah, well. Let me hug you again anyway," Uncle Lee said with a laugh and pulled Roxy into another hug, squeezing her tightly against him. When he finally pulled away, Uncle Lee stuck out his tongue at Roxy. "Those girls kicked us out of the house and told us to keep you company here instead if you'll have us. They seem to think we can't handle even being in the same house as someone giving birth, can you believe it? Like I never had two of my own kids."

"How rude," Roxy replied in a joking tone, directing them to follow her through the curtain and back upstairs. She waved good-bye to Nico, whose entire face was now covered in price tags and was working on covering his arms and hands. "So where's Colin? Is he coming over as well?"

" _Apparently_ , dads are allowed to wait outside of the room, so he got to at least stay over there while we got kicked out" explained Patrick, following Roxy and his father upstairs. "Though I've never seen Creevey turn so white until Lea started screaming at him."

"Do they think it'll be soon that the babies come?" She had never attended a birth—unless her own counted; Roxy had still been at Hogwarts when Remy was born and Victoire had gone on holiday when she gave birth to Will. None of the other cousins had had children yet, except for Faith, and Roxy had _not_ been invited to that event.

"Midwife said it could be tomorrow morning before they'll be ready to let us back in. not sure what Colin is going to do if it really _does_ take that long—sleep on the couch or something, I guess. Did Lea and I take so long to come around?" Patrick turned to his father.  
"Much longer," replied Uncle Lee teasingly, to which the two young adults made faces.

Roxy unlocked the door to the flat, letting the three of them back inside. Patrick immediately settled onto the couch, while Roxy and lee eased themselves into the armchairs on either side.

"You enjoying work?" asked Uncle Lee, smiling at Roxy while Patrick laid down on the couch so that his long legs hung off of the side. "Ange says that you're working for that prestigious potions company in downtown? That's a shame, hearing that no one with the last name of Weasley is going to be running the main shop any more. It won't be the same, and I'm sure plenty of people can agree with me on that."

"Anne's practically in charge here at the main store anyway," Roxy said with a shrug. "She runs things by Uncle Ron and Mum, but we were never very involved to begin with, even when Dad was around. This was really all of _his_ dream, _his_ work. But that doesn't mean—" She took a deep breath, steeling herself to continue on about this secret that she hadn't told _anyone_ else, not even Jo or Aniya."—that I couldn't one day take over. I'm clearly great at potions, and I'd like to think that I'm pretty imaginative as well. Anything else that I might be pants at can be balanced out by just hiring someone else who knows what they're doing."

"Good, good. That Anne woman just has always struck me as too—too businessy to be running a joke shop. She doesn't fit."

"Businessy?" repeated Patrick, smirking. "What the hell does that even mean, Dad? And besides, Mum says that _you_ were the one who introduced Anne to Uncle George in the first place, so you must not have always hated her."

"I thought she'd be one of those girls who lasted only a month or two and then quit, like usual. I wasn't expecting George to like her so much that he practically handed the whole damn shop to her after his passing. I mean, Merlin's pants, just because he—" Uncle Lee broke off, turning completely red in the face.

Roxy's head snapped up and she stared over at her god-father, who began to twiddle his thumbs and hum loudly to avoid Roxy's intense gaze. Anne had been hired nearly two years before Roxy was even born, so seeing her working downstairs was always just a part of life, one of those things that would never change. It was hard to imagine her being _hired_ , and even weirder to imagine her _leaving._ But…

Was Uncle Lee implying that there had once been a time that her father and Anne—no, that was crazy because Roxy's parents loved each other too much to _ever_ cheat on the other person...it just wasn't possible.

"Uncle Lee?" she asked, her voice breaking. He was still looking away, still red from embarrassment. "Uncle Lee, what were you going to say? W-what were you about to say about Dad and Anne? Because it sounded like you were about to say that Dad fancied her, which doesn't make any sense, because Dad loved Mum and he would never cheat on her, right? And especially not someone, like, eleven years younger than him, right? Uncle Lee, please tell me you weren't going to say anything like that. Please."

"It was only just the one time," whispered Uncle lee, staring down at his hands. Patrick threw his father a shocked look while Roxy's heart fluttered and she had to grab onto the arms of her chair to keep from falling over. "George—I don't know what it is he ever saw in her, but they were—it was a Christmas party, you were only a few months old and I—there was quite a bit of alcohol being served. You know how your father was when the Firewhiskey was brought out. He—your—Ange found them in a cupboard together. She never did forgive him, or her."

"But Mum still lets Anne work her. Lets her run the store on a day-to-day basis. If Anne did that, then why wouldn't Mum fire her immediately? I would have."

Uncle lee shook his head. "I don't know why. Angelina never confided in me about it, and if she ever told Katie, I wasn't made aware. Maybe—maybe your mum took pity on a young girl that was desperately in love, or maybe she threatened George if he ever so much as looked at another person besides her for the rest of his life. All I know is she never let George and Anne be by themselves again. That's why we would always call you Roxy for short, instead of Anne. The one time anyone _did_ try it, your mum nearly blew up."

"Why would Dad ever do anything like this, though? He loved Mum, didn't he? Why would he cheat on her if he loved her so much?" Roxy was shaking; Patrick pulled himself off of the couch to wrap his arms around her, which made Roxy jump; tears began to form in the corners of her eyes as the whole situation overwhelmed her.

"I don't want to make excuses for George's behaviour, but—you know what he was like when he had too much to drink. Your dad...he stopped being your dad. He'd act out and wouldn't ever care that he was hurting anyone else because all he could focus on was his own pain. But if it means anything, your dad _did_ regret kissing Anne for the rest of his life. If Ange had asked him to fire Anne at any point, I have no doubt he would have done it in a heartbeat."

"No, that doesn't make me feel better at all," she replied, wrapping her arms around her chest. Patrick began to stroke Roxy's curls and, out of her eyesight, jerked his chin at his father to indicate that lee ought to stop talking about George and Anne.

"Lea said she'd love for you to stop by at some point," said Patrick loudly; the hand not still ruffling her curls was now rubbing comforting circles on her back. "She feels like you two don't hang out enough any more. Maybe you could stop by the house with us once we're allowed back inside. As long as that super intense midwife isn't around, I bet we'd even be allowed to hold the twins for a few minutes. What d'you say, Rox? After all, don't girls usually like little babies?"

Roxy breathed in and out slowly through her nose in order to calm down. Every instinct in her body was telling Roxy to run downstairs and rip Anne's head off, but she knew getting into a public fight over an incident that had happened only once—and nearly two decades ago to boot—was not the smartest idea. Not to mention that Anne was twenty years older than Roxy and quite a bit taller, as well.

Besides, wouldn't it be better to get the full story from Mum before confronting Anne about _any_ of this? In case, there was more to it than Uncle Lee either knew or was letting on.

"Babies are fine," she said heavily to Patrick, still trying to control the angry pounding of her heart. Logic could always be used to bring order to her mind once more, but her emotions would allow no such order. They wanted only chaos and instinct to rule over her mind and leave Roxy straight downstairs to Anne's office.

 _You have to be mature about this_ , she told herself sternly, hands balled into fists. _Even if she hadn't been—you have to be the adult here. No fighting. Be the Slytherin you're meant to be, weigh your options. Fighting wouldn't solve anything, and you know that._

"Perhaps Roxy and I should go for a walk, yeah?" said Patrick kindly, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek. He must have noticed the pained expression on her face. "I can go get our cloaks and you get a drink of water, okay?"

She nodded, doing her best to keep him from noticing that she was shaking from head to toe. "Mum has some spare cloaks in the cupboard," she told him, pointing towards the hallway. "Mine should be in there, too. You'd probably fit—" She nearly choked on the word, but held back the sob that threatened to crawl up from inside of her. "—you'd probably fit in one of Freddie's older ones. You two were always close in size."

"Alright," Patrick replied, his voice soft and comforting. "Yours is the green one?"

"Emerald. I _am_ a snake after all."

"But a very pretty one, I must protest, for, being such a creature that is usually considered to be one of deceit, you are astonishingly honest."

"Thank you for such kind words, Sir Lion."

"You're welcome, Lady Snake. I mean them truly"

They're both trying so hard to light-hearted, to joke and play around like they always did with each other, but there is an air of tension beneath their words, a layer of caution; they are dancing around each other, never quite reaching the true subject underneath but instead choosing to leave it behind in their seats when they both get up, he to the cupboard and she to the kitchen.

Roxy stretched upwards, grabbing a drinking glass from the kitchen and pointed her wand at it. " _Aguamenti_ ," she muttered, watching a small stream of water trickle out of the end of her wand to fill up the glass. Once it was full, she took a deep drink, only pausing when she finally ran out of air.

Her hands were still trembling, Roxy noticed when she set the glass down in the sink. That surprised her—she, strangely, had expected the water to have a near-instantaneous effect on her like it always did when she was a child and grew upset. Mum or Dad would pour her a glass of water and by the time she was done drinking, all her problems went back to being silly, infantile situations that could be easily fixed.

How could one simple mistake have ruined so much? Was this why Mum never went into the shop any more? Why she always sent Roxy downstairs with the employees' salaries at the end of the month, or else had an owl fly downstairs?

She shook her head, stepping back into the sitting room, where Uncle Lee was sitting in his chair, as still as a statue. "Hello," she said as calmly as she could manage, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jeans but pulling them back out almost immediately when she felt them trembling violently against her skin.

"I'll just stay here, shall I?" asked Uncle Lee, still staring down at his hands. Roxy nodded, moving forward to hug her god-father. She felt bad for him—it couldn't have been easy holding in a secret like that for so long, every time he saw Anne. Perhaps that was why he had decided to stop coming by the shop after Dad died because seeing the place run by the woman that had nearly ruined the marriage of his best friends was more than he could handle.

"C'mon Rox, let's go before it starts snowing again, yeah?" Patrick said, handing Roxy her cloak and swinging a long blue one around his shoulders. Roxy took his hand, feeling the warmth in his fingers.

He opened the door and they both stepped into the cold.


	27. The obligatory Christmas chapter: Part 1

Christmas came faster than Roxy was expecting; it felt like she blinked and two whole weeks had passed. The shop and flat were decorated, presents were purchased and wrapped, and thirteen snowmen singing a vulgar, off-key rendition of 'God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriff' were set throughout the streets of Diagon Alley, making the children laugh and the parents grumble about the decline in morals amongst the youth, especially around the holidays, not that anyone was listening to complaints when there was too much fun to be had all the time.

As per the Weasley tradition, Christmas was being held at the Burrow, where Roxy anticipated enough sweets and desserts to send the whole family into a week long food coma. Grandmum loved Christmas more than any other holiday—which was saying a lot because Grandmum looked for any excuse to host people and serve an exorbitant amount of food to the largest group she could rope together at a moment's notice.

Roxy, however, could not find herself quite able to get entirely into the Christmas spirit, no matter how many times she reminded herself that this was supposed to be a _happy_ holiday. Between the discovery that her father had kissed another woman—something she had still not brought up to Mum—and the fact that Lucy and Kieran had been joined by yet another victim—a twenty-two year old female—there was very little she could think of that might make the holidays seem better.

Not that Christmas had ever truly been her holiday; she was more a fan of Halloween, if anything, but Roxy was willing to at least put on a smile and pretend like she was glad to stuff herself into a house that should _not_ be expected to fit as many people as it was. At least there would be presents received out of the whole ordeal, and she would get some time away from the shop as well.

Roxy sighed, looking around the shop at all the customers rushing around, buying up the last of the remaining products before Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was closed for the holidays. Last minute shopping always brought a nice in sales that helped the shop coast once more through the empty months when the majority of customers were too far away to reach the main shop and were therefore forced to choose between visiting the Hogsmeade location or ordering by owl. Most of the part-timers would be let go in January.

It was always sad to see them go, knowing that, nine times out of ten, she would only see these former employees if they chose to one day return as a customer.

AJ, Millie, Tull, Jane, and Nico, who were all around Roxy's age, and so, had either graduated or dropped out and were accepting any form of work wherever it could be found; Roxy truly did think that having to say good-bye was the hardest parts of the end of the winter holidays, because it was always nice to have people hanging around the store who were both _her_ age and who were not trying to charm her into giving them free merchandise.

"How's the shop going, boss?" Jo popped her head up in front of Roxy, making the shorter girl jump in shock. Jo laughed. "It's really been busy this year, huh? Lots of people—Anne must be pretty pleased." She swung a leg over the banister, pulling herself up.

"Mmhm," replied Roxy non-committally. She didn't really want to talk about Anne just then. "Hey, Lea—my god-sister—said we could come by on Boxing Day and we could meet the twins. What d'you thin, should we stop by? I bet Colin would be willing to give us a little bit of Firewhiskey if there aren't any _real_ adults around to tell him not to."

Jo wrinkled her nose. The only child of fairly distant parents, Jo was already hesitant about the whole idea of taking part in a Weasley family Christmas, especially given the family's general opinion concerning Slytherins who were not Roxy. The idea of following up an entire day surrounded by noisy Weasleys by going to visit noisy _babies_ did not appeal to Jo in the slightest.

"Lea's nice," said Roxy, a slight wheedling tone to her voice. "And babies aren't _that_ bad. They'll probably just spend most of the day sleeping."

"Aren't the Jordans also a bunch of half-psycho Gryffindors?" Roxy nodded, making Roxy groan. "Why does your family insist on being so full of bloody lions? Give me a clever snake any day over all that false bravado."

"My _whole_ family isn't Gryffindor. Mol and Lu were both in Hufflepuff, and Dominique, Louis, and Rose got put into Ravenclaw. And Aunt Audrey was a Ravenclaw, too—oh, and Aunt Fleur didn't even _go_ to Hogwarts at all."

"No, she's worse. She's _French_."

"I resent that. I happen to think that the French are wonderful people. Or at least, they make for great brides." Teddy Lupin grinned when the two girls screamed before they both laughed and leaned across the balcony to hug the Metamorphagus. Teddy was one of those sorts of people that _everyone_ liked, no matter what house they'd been in.

"Why're you here, Ted?" Roxy asked, leaning against his shoulder, not caring that the wooden banister was digging into her side.

"Oh, I just wanted to visit my absolute favourite of the Weasley cousins and see how she was doing, since I feel like we never talk any more."

"I thought Victoire was your favourite Weasley," Jo interjected.

"Why d'you think I married her? Ergo, she's no longer a Weasley, she's a Lupin, so little Roxy can be my favourite now, see?" He gave them a very wolfish grin, his ears twitching to become pointier, like an elf; his nose shrank to look more like a button and his hair shifted from neon blue to Weasley red.

"So why're you _really_ here?" Roxy insisted. Teddy liked to joke around a lot, but she could tell he was here for more than just a chat, especially since it was the day before Christmas and he ought to have been spending this time with his wife and two sons.

"Well, I'm supposed to make sure all the little Weasleys make it to the Burrow safely. Grandmum Weasley entrusted me to round you all up and send you on your merry way."

"But the shop's not closed yet," said Roxy, frowning. It was a tradition that had started when she and Freddie were children—he had been nine and she just three years old. They always stayed up on the balcony to wait until the shop was closed so that they could Apparate over to the Burrow together as a family. Even after Freddie and Dad both passed away, Roxy kept up the tradition every single year, no matter what.

"Well your mum's already there and she's said it's fine to let Anne close up by herself just this once." Teddy gave her a lopsided grin that was meant to be encouraging but instead only made her stomach drop.

"No," she repeated. "It's _tradition_. We _always_ wait until the shop closes and then we—together—to the Burrow. As a family. That's how tradition works!"

"Rox, what's wrong? It's just one time, right?" Jo put her hand on Roxy's arm, but the smaller girl twitched and jerked herself away from the touch of her friend.

They didn't understand at all. How _could_ they understand? Neither of them had lost a brother, neither of them—well, Teddy had lost his parents, but he was much too young to remember anything when they passed away, so it practically didn't count for him. They hadn't grown up with these traditions, keeping them alive year after year, regardless of Freddie dying, regardless of Dad dying, regardless of finding out that Anne had kissed her father in a bloody cupboard of all places—

"Roxy?" Teddy cupped his hands over her cheeks, holding her face close to his. "Roxy, c'mon, stop crying, it's fine. We can wait for the shop to close together, alright? You and I and little Jo here, we'll all three stand here and wait for Anne to lock up, then we'll head over to Molly's Christmas dinner, okay? It's all fine."

Roxy hadn't even known she was crying. As Teddy conjured a cloth to wipe her face, she closed her eyes in embarrassment. She'd gotten emotional so many times over the last month, an occurrence that normally never happened to her very rarely, if at all. Why was she losing control so easily nowadays, crying over the smallest of things for seemingly no reason? It just didn't make sense.

"I want to stay," she whispered into Teddy's shirt, sniffling twice before getting her emotions under control once more. Mostly. "We're almost done for the day anyway, it'll only be a little while longer. It's tradition, we do it every year. Me and Freddie, we do—" She choked on an errant sob, forcing the emotion back down. "— _did_ this every year, you know? We'd always watch Dad rush around the place, helping everyone until it was time to close. Mum would bring us biscuits and milk, and Freddie and I would talk about what we hoped we were getting for Christmas. When I was really little, I couldn't always make it until closing time, so Freddie would wrap me up in a blanket and braid my hair while I was asleep."

"And that tradition doesn't have to end just yet," murmured Teddy.

The three of them sat on the balcony; Jo summoned a plate of biscuits that had been set out for customers and Teddy conjured up three plastic cups of milk—"Even better than when you're a kid, because I can spike these"—and the leaned against each other, making jokes about the customers walking around below them.

For once, things were nice. Normal. Peaceful. Everything felt right.

* * *

"Oh, it's my little girl, my little Roxy, hello! And Teddy—you're late, young man, your wife has been worried sick about you. Oh, and, uh, Joanne, right? It's lovely to see you, dear, we have plenty of food and plenty of beds, though I recommend waking up especially early if you'd like to shower before we open presents in the morning."

"Hey Grandmum Weasley," said Teddy, rolling his eyes at her obsessive and quite motherly behaviour, "you _do_ know that I'm thirty years old now, right? There's no need to fret over me being missing for a few extra hours like I'm Remy or Will. And besides," he put an arm around Roxy, giving the younger girl another wolfish grin, "we were completing an important tradition that just _couldn't_ be interrupted for anything."

"Tell Victoire that," replied Grandmum just as Victoire herself came bustling into the kitchen with a scowl on her face and two toddlers screaming their heads off, hanging from both hips.

She took one look at Teddy standing by the door and glared at him, her lips pursed as she stomped over to her husband, handing the Metamorphagus the louder of his two squabbling sons, the younger one, who almost immediately fell silent once in his father's arms.

"I hate you, by the way," Victoire told Teddy, grabbing one of the many biscuits laying around and handing it to Remy. "They've been crying for hours—both of them, very loudly—and now you show up, _much_ later than you promised, and they shut up immediately."

"Shaddup!" echoed four year old Remy, giggling when Victoire groaned. "Shaddup, shaddup, shaddup!"

"Shu'p!" Will chimed in, giving everyone else in the room a toothy smile.

"Why do they only say the words I _don't_ want them to learn?" asked Victoire with a scowl, taking a bite out of what was left of Remy's cookie. "And don't any of you say _anything_ about how it's my fault for saying the damn thing in front of them in the first place, trust me, I know."

"Damn!" cried Remy and Will at the same time, looking very pleased with themselves when Victoire started choking on her cookie.

"Is this how Christmas always goes in your family?" whispered Jo to Roxy, who shrugged and looked over at her grandmother; the Weasley matriarch was now encouraging Victoire to play a little Celestina Warbeck for the kids to help them get to sleep at night.

"It always worked for my boys."

"Gran! I am _not_ playing that ancient drivel and ruining my kids' brains, okay? I have to listen to enough shit all day—"

"Shit!"

"Merlin's pants! I need to take a break. This is just absolutely ridiculous. I hate Christmas, I hate coming here, I absolutely hate all of it! And don't you dare come near me tonight, Edward Lupin, or I'll bash your brains in— _you_ can be their parent for the rest of the night, because I am done!" Victoire and Teddy wandered towards the staircase with their sons; she spoke at length about how awful her whole day had been while Teddy listened quietly, looking quite mollified.

Roxy turned to Jo, holding back a laugh as she explained that, "normally, it's not this bad until Uncle Ron's on his third or fourth glass and he and Uncle Percy decide to start singing—oh, and there was that time James set fire to the tree, and then when Lucy and Louis brought a niffler in and it tore up the couch, or when—"

Matilda Longbottom was standing at the far end of the sitting room, laughing at something James was saying, lightly hitting him on the chest, her false-sounding giggling reaching Roxy even from the other side of the house.

"Ew. What's _she_ doing here?" grumbled Jo, wrinkling her nose as she followed Roxy's gaze over to Tilly. "And, one more point for the ew factor, is she hitting on your cousin? He's, like, twenty-four, and way too much of a troublemaker to be interested in a bookish rule follower like Tilly Longbottom. Unless he's suddenly into that sort of thing?"

"He has a girlfriend," Roxy replied, wishing she could make Tilly drop dead simply by concentrating all of her negative thoughts onto the other girl. The last thing she needed right now was stupid Tilly making a crappy Christmas even worse.

"I though he and little miss Beauxbatons broke up a couple of months ago."

"New girl—like, _really_ new. They haven't even been dating for a week. That's why didn't bring her here, no doubt. The easiest way to scare someone off is to throw a bunch of Weasleys at someone all at once, especially over the holidays. She's, like, Lucy and Louis' age, I think, though I haven't officially met her."

"So she's, like, super ancient?" Jo asked with a smirk.

"And a Gryffindor to boot."

"Ugh!" Jo groaned mockingly, throwing up her hands. "So many damn Gryffindors! I can barely stand it, this whole house stinks of lions to its very foundations."

"Sorry," said Roxy, giggling at her friend's antics. "Maybe if you shower a whole bunch, then later on the smell will go away. I'm sure it can't be too hard."

"How would you know?" retorted Jo, sticking out her tongue. "You're coated in their stench, you're absolutely _drowning_ in the smell of stinky old lions." She wrinkled her nose before breaking into laughing, having to grab hold of the counter to keep upright. When she finished, Jo ran her hands through her hair and grabbed a faery cake from one of the dessert plates, taking a deep breath. "Come on, Rox, let's go make Ms Longbottom's day a little worse."

They headed into the sitting room, where the noise from several different conversation washed over them. Uncle Percy and Aunt Hermione argued over some dumb law being put in place soon concerning cauldron thickness; uncle Ron drunkenly yelled that _this year_ was the year for the Chudley Cannons, even though we're currently in the last place, as usual; Louis and Rayna were feeding each other various sweets, their voices a low murmur.

"Hey, Jamesie-poo!" called Jo loudly, throwing an arm around the older boy. Tilly made a disgusted face, but thankfully said nothing, not even in protest about having been interrupted by Jo and Roxy's arrival.

"Oh, look, it's Bartley, the one person I wanted to see at my grandparents' house more than anyone else. I'm _so_ glad you're here, Bartley, my night has been improved tenfold thanks to your arrival." His voice was dry and biting, but the curling smirk playing on his lips suggested that his sarcasm was only _mostly_ meant to hurt.

"You love us, Jamesie-poo."

"I love when you don't ever call me that again."

"Call you what, Jamesie-poo?"

"You _know_ what, Bartley. You keep saying calling me that same stupid name no matter how many times I threaten to hex your ass."

"I don't think I quite know what you mean. See, there are just so many different things that you've told me not to call you over the years, so you could be talking about any one of them." She smirked before adding, "Jamesie-poo."

"I hate you."

"Oh, but I _love_ you. I want to marry you and have a dozen little snakey babies with you—"

"No child of mine would ever dare be a snake!"

'What's wrong with being a snake?" asked Roxy quietly; James turned to her, red in the face and panting from frustration. Roxy gave him a hurt look. James had been, amongst all of her cousins, one of the hardest to win the affection of once more after she was sorted into Slytherin. It had probably been a good thing that they only spent one year at Hogwarts together, or else their relationship might have fallen apart completely. James wasn't the most understanding of people _now_ , and he'd been even worse when he was seventeen.

"There's nothing _wrong_ with Slytherin," James amended hurriedly, making Jo snicker and Tilly roll her eyes. "Just, you know how the Potter family. We're—we've _always_ been in Gryffindor. That's how it always is."

"That's how it was with the Weasleys, and now look at us," said Roxy, her voice still soft. "Half as many _not_ in Gryffindor as are. So your kids wouldn't _have_ to be in Gryffindor if they didn't want to be. They could be in Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, or even Slytherin if that's where the Sorting Hat decided they belonged. It's not up to you, James. You can't control them."

"My parents used to joke about disowning Dean for getting put into Slytherin," Tilly offered, ignoring the glares she received from Jo.

"Dean?" asked James, confused.

Roxy had to admit that she, too, had no clue who 'Dean' was. Didn't the Longbottoms have three _daughters_?

"Oh, Dean used to be Alice. He-they're—iunno. Stuff has been going on in the last couple of months. Alice is Dean, she is he, this is how life is and I'm mostly used to it by now. It just sort of becomes normal." Tilly shrugged. "Dad and Mum are still struggling to come around to the whole notion though I have had the liberty of knowing since last year about everything, so I suppose that's understandable.

Roxy and Jo exchanged incredulous looks, somewhat at a loss for words, though, if they were being honest with themselves, not _entirely_ surprised by this revelation. The middle Longbottom child wore the boys' uniform at Hogwarts and would sleep in the Common Room, changing and showering only _after_ everyone else had left. Roxy had always just assumed it a quirk—but Professor Longbottom's _daughter_ being Professor Longbottom's _son_ made sense, she supposed, in a 'this is all new to me and I am very puzzled about it' sort of way.

"Alright," said James slowly, looking just as bewildered as Roxy felt. "Well, on that note, I think I'm going to find a large quantity of alcohol to consume all at once and then I'm going to enjoy the rest of the night being in far too drunken a stupor to care about what anyone else says to me. Because I have been here for only three hours, but there is just far too much going on all at once for me to properly care about any of it. I shall see you three lovely ladies later. Probably. No promises, of course."

He wandered in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Roxy, Jo, and Tilly to stare at each other, an uncomfortable silence hanging in the air. After all, even if she deserved it, Roxy and Jo would never be allowed to get away with punching or cursing Tilly at Grandmum's Christmas party; not to mention that Longbottom was just the sort of girl to run off and tears and go find an adult—probably Roxy's mum—to get them both in trouble.

Stupid Tilly Longbottom. She ruined pretty much everything, including Christmas.

"So I hear you're a ghost hunter now, Roxy?" asked Tilly in what Roxy was certain was the most condescending voice she could manage.

"What do you mean by a ghost hunter, exactly?" she replied through gritted teeth.

"Someone told me you've been running up and down the whole county looking for someone to tell you about ghosts, even though we've all been taught since we were children that they don't really exist any more. Oh, _and_ I heard that you fainted at Hogwarts when you went to visit Professor Trelawney as well."

Roxy groaned. Had _everyone_ heard about that? Was there just some nosey little kid at Hogwarts spreading the story of Roxy Weasley _fainting_ at Hogwarts and getting sent to the infirmary? Wasn't one of Rita Skeeter's relatives still at Hogwarts? That was probably who was going around spreading crap stories about her.

"Why do you care what I do with my free time, Tilly?" she muttered, scowling at the blonde. Tilly always managed to find the one thing that bothered Roxy above anything else. It was like a talent with her, immediately honing in on and latching onto whatever made Roxy look as dumb as she could. It was one of the things that Roxy hated most about the uppity, 'saintly' Ravenclaw.

"Oh, I never said that I cared. Just that that's what I _heard_. Roxy Weasley, chasing after ghosts, looking for books and hunting down lunatic faux Seers for answers." Tilly laughed and Roxy was suddenly very tempted to find out what noises Longbottom would make when she was crammed inside of Grandmum's fireplace. "But the thing that I'm _most_ interested in, more than anything else, is..."

Tilly bit her lip, pausing. She looked away, her gaze flitting around the room. Roxy rolled her eyes. What was it with Longbottom and her flair for the dramatic?

"Just ask the damn question, Tilly. I don't have all day to waste on you, you know."

"Right." Tilly took a deep breath, almost...was she steeling herself? Roxy didn't understand the sudden hesitancy. Surely all she wanted was to make another joke at Roxy's expense like she had been doing for years now. "Listen, Roxy, what I wanted to know was—have you found anything out? Have you made any contact with ghosts yet?"

" _What?!_ "


	28. The obligatory Christmas chapter: Part 2

"I said I wanted to know if you'd found anything about ghosts," Tilly repeated calmly like her request was the most reasonable thing in the world. Roxy gaped at her in response, left entirely speechless. "I want to help you with the research you might have—see if I can make anything of what you've found out so far _if_ you've found anything. We could—" she seemed to choke on the word, "—could _help_ each other out to collect more information. After all, what's the muggle phrase, that two heads are better than none?"

"Better than _one_ ," muttered Jo darkly, rolling her eyes. "It's two heads are better than _one_."

"How do you know that?"

"Took Muggle Studies at Hogwarts? Actually paid attention, unlike most of the half-wits in there."

"Oh, really? That's a shock, a Slytherin learning about muggles. And they're so strange anyway, aren't they, with such funny phrases? But that's not the point. I want to help you, Roxy. And you too, Jo, if you're helping out. I guess. And I know you have a thousand and one reasons not to trust me—"

"You got that right."

Roxy stepped on Jo's foot to shut her up.

"Ahem, well, yes, but now I'm telling you that I want to make up for things by offering my assistance, see? I'm a Ravenclaw, not to mention a Longbottom. There're plenty of things that I can get access to, top secret things that they would never let just _anyone_ see."

"So Slytherins, you mean? Because my name carries, if anything, a lot more weight than yours. _I'm_ a Weasley. My uncle is Harry Potter, my aunt is Hermione Granger—there are so many Weasleys in the Ministry that you can barely walk down a corridor without running into one. So don't tell me that it's your last name that gets you access to places that Jo and I would be kicked out of immediately. If you really want to help, be honest about it, Tilly. I don't want to start this conversation off with you lying and mocking me right from the beginning."

"I won't—I wasn't! I'm being honest about this. I _can_ get to books you wouldn't be able to access. And sure, maybe it's because you're a Slytherin, but that's not exactly my fault! I can help you, though. I can get those books, those papers, that you need to look at. You _need_ me."

Roxy could not get an accurate read on Tilly. She had no way of telling how serious the other girl was being, or how honest. But if Roxy did agree to work with this girl that she considered to be her enemy, was it possible that she could gain access to something that would help explain was was wrong with Lucy and Kieran?

"Fine. But not until after the holidays are over, got it? At least, wait until we've had dinner and such," Roxy said firmly, ignoring Jo's protests. "You and I aren't going to ruin Christmas for everyone else just because you've decided to stick your nose in my business all of a sudden."

"Alright. Agreed."

They shook hands though Roxy could not quite convince herself that she was making the smartest choice here. After all, Tilly Longbottom had never been trustworthy in the past. Why was it necessarily safe to trust her now?

The information gained from this partnership better outweigh the cost of having to deal with the eldest Longbottom for any length of time.

* * *

"Move aside, move aside you lot, let the kids sit closest to the tree—"

"Hey Rox, you're still a kid. Wanna join 'em?"

"Sod off, Lou—"

"Language, Roxy!"

"Wha' in the boxes, Gran?"

"Presents for everyone in the family, dear. See? This one has your name on it."

"James is more childish than I am—"

"Yeah, but you're the baby of all of us cousins, so—"

"I like presents!"

"Yes, we know, dear."

"Can we hurry? This house is too small for so many people to all be squished into one space like this."

"Children next to the tree!"

"James, Louis, leave Roxy alone—"

"Don't you bloody touch me—"

"Presents!"

"It's okay, Remy, we'll get to the presents soon enough, be patient—"

"Gran! Make them leave me—"

"Everybody cut it out!" roared Granddad, making the whole house stop what they were doing. After all, Granddad rarely ever yelled about _anything_ , so when he raised his voice, everyone froze in place to listen to what he had to say. "Thank you," he said with a quiet sigh before easing himself into a chair. "Now, Remy, Will, Faith—you and the rest of the _children—_ and we're defining children as those still in Hogwarts or younger—you lot will sit right there next to the tree, yes? And Roxy can sit wherever she wants because she's an adult, so let's leave her alone and we can start unwrapping presents for fear that we'll still be here _next_ Christmas."

The twenty-five Weasley family members—plus another fifteen guests that added up to forty people in a space not meant for more than half that—all stuffed themselves wherever a seat could be found; Roxy untangled herself from the grasp of her cousins and rejoined Jo in their corner of the sitting room, as from both the tree and Tilly, who, following their discussion, had stalked off to talk to Lysander and Lorcan Scamander about who knew what.

This was what made a Weasley family Christmas so hectic, that there were always so many people to hand out presents to, to the point that, even started at seven in the morning—as early as Grandmum dared to start waking people up—they might still be sorting through presents until noon.

When Roxy had been a little girl—before Hogwarts but still old enough to read the names off of the tags—it had been up to her to hand out presents to her various family members until she absolutely refused to any longer on the grounds of total exhaustion.

Today, however, it was Teddy that handed out presents, his hair turning grey, coupled with a quickly grown snowy white beard. He couldn't be talked into growing a belly for his Santa costume, but at least, he allowed Grandmum to stuff him into a red and white jumper, as well as sourly drop a mangy old Christmas hat onto his head, a hat that had been in the family for years and really ought to have been thrown out, as Teddy kept insisting.

He didn't make a very good Santa, in Roxy's opinion. Not jolly enough.

Sifting through the presents, he began to call out names one at a time before handing out each carefully wrapped box or tightly tied bag through the crowd until it made its way to the recipient. Those who moved too slowly to open their presents were "encouraged" to speed up the process by a chanting James and Louis while Grandmum fretted about whether or not she had prepared enough food for everyone at dinner.

Roxy, like everyone else who was Teddy's age or younger, had been kicked out of the sitting room by midnight so that the 'adults' could set out everything for the next day. Roxy thought this continuation of secrecy was a bit silly considering she was nineteen—no longer a child by any means—but she and Jo went to bed more or less willingly, not wanting to get into an argument right before Christmas, as well as not want ting set a particularly bad example for the actual children in the house.

"Here, Rox," said Elianne. She was Mrs Scamander's youngest child at nine years old, as well as being the only daughter. With the same light blonde hair as her mother and older twin brothers, Elianne always looked like she had just returned from somewhere very cold, as her cheeks were always flushed. It made her look quite innocent—almost angelic if she hadn't had such a mischievous nature.

Roxy took the present from the little girl and quickly ripped off the wrapping paper, not wanting to fall to the mercy of James' and Louis' chanted threats.

Inside was the annual Weasley Christmas sweater from her grandmother—how that woman could knit so many things, even _with_ magic, was beyond Roxy—in her usual colours of silver and green, with a dark blue, her favourite colour, "R" on the front.

"Thanks, Gran," she told the Weasley matriarch, who smiled brightly in response and told Roxy to try it on. Complying, she slipped the jumper over her pyjamas and turned back to the still far too large stack of presents that was waiting to be opened up.

Teddy grabbed the next one and the process began again.

"You wanna know what we'd be doing at my house right now?" muttered Jo to Roxy. The smaller girl raised an eyebrow, curious. Jo rarely spoke about home. All that Roxy truly knew was that her dad was a muggle businessman who was rarely ever at home and got easily frustrated with the lackadaisical nature of his four children. Her mum was a half-blood French witch that Jo usually only ever referred to as a " _chienne_ "—Roxy had asked Vic what that meant after hearing Jo use it for the first time; she was pretty sure most people who were on good terms with their mothers didn't typically call them a "bitch".

"Right now I would still be asleep. My dad would just now be going to bed after working all night to avoiding sleeping in the same bed as you-know-who. _She_ would get up soon to start ordering the house elves around about making Christmas dinner. My presents would be dropped off outside my door while my siblings also slept in and refused to talk to each other. Later, around three in the afternoon, one of the house elves would come to collect me and I would sit at the children's' end of the table, spending the next couple of hours eating far too rich food and listening to my little cousins talk about Quidditch. In contrast, I think spending the day with a bunch of smelly lions is a lot better than celebrating by myself."

"Well, that's good, then. No one should have to spend Christmas alone."

"No, they shouldn't. Being with your family is always very important."

They turned to look at Emily, who had left her spot next to Faith and all of the presents to join Roxy and Jo in the corner. She looked exhausted, with bags under her eyes and her hair sticking out everywhere in a dark, wavy mess.

"Hello, Emily."

"Hello," she replied. "I was surprised to be invited. Usually, Christmas is just me and Faith and our lonely little gnome-free tree. But it's nice to have other people around to talk to, not to mention all of the good food. Your family is quite inviting, if not a little bit too intense about the holidays if you don't mind my saying so."

"You never get used to it," joked Roxy with a somewhat forced laugh.

She'd not seen Emily since July when the older woman came by Lily's party to talk to someone. Roxy had never actually discovered who Emily was looking for, nor why she'd been looking for them, but Roxy figured that Emily had a right to be at least the slightest bit uncomfortable talking to Roxy. After all, seeing Emily and Faith here still made _Roxy_ uncomfortable; it was like, for a moment, just a brief moment, Freddie was still alive and was about to walk through the door at any moment. And then she would remember that that wasn't the case and everything would come crashing down around her once more.

It was safe to assume that Emily felt a similar way every time that she saw Roxy.

"You don't suppose that your gran included Fai and me in that jumper count, do you?" Emily asked cautiously as Uncle Bill unwrapped his own Weasley sweater—this one a royal blue with a golden 'B' on its chest. "Not that I would be opposed to receiving a present from her, but...I always thought that was a Weasley thing, and Fai and me—we're not really Weasleys, are we? I didn't even have an opportunity to take his last name, and it didn't—I mean—they didn't ask about surnames when it came to Fai. Your mum always figured letting her keep my name was probably for the best, really. Not as much attention on her from the media."

"Wait..." said Jo, her brow furrowing as she stared at Emily thoughtfully. "Aren't you the one who gave _The Daily Prophet_ all that shit to run on the day of Freddie's birthday? The one that craps all over Mrs Ange and Roxy because you felt like they 'didn't support you enough' or some bullshit like that?"

"They twisted my words around. It's—it's _The Prophet_ , you know how they are about stuff like that, especially when it comes to this family, I swear, what they claim I said isn't the truth."

Faith was clapping her hands in the background, giggling with excitement as she held up her newly received doll.

"I loved Freddie. I _love_ him, and I love Faith. I—I definitely don't regret having her." Emily was quiet, her hands in her lap, her head bowed. "All the support that Mrs Ange gave me after he died, and after Faith was born...I will never forget that and I will certainly never be able to make it up to her. She's helped me so much in the last five years, and to see _The Prophet_ twist everything I said about her...it hurt me just as much as it must have hurt you. I would never have said a thing if I'd known they would manipulate my own words against me so much."

Roxy kept watching the Christmas celebrations without saying a word, mostly because there was nothing _to_ say. She had not made Emily talk to _The Daily Prophet_ ; she had not been the one to ask questions and sour words purely for the sake of a story. It was not her place to say anything about what Emily had done.

Instead, she remained focused on observing the presents being unwrapped and thank you's being exchanged, with laughter erupting around the room every time one of the younger kids reacted in a particularly amusing way. Faith was clinging to her doll, rocking it back and forth as she hummed a muggle nursery rhyme.

"Hey, this one is for Emily!" called Teddy, lobbing a soft package in their direction, which landed neatly in front of Emily.

She stared at the package like it was a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment; her eyes went wide when no one immediately laughed and explained that it was just a joke, that she hadn't _actually_ received a present, of course. The tag definitely had her name on it, right there in big, easy to read letters—Emily Maccabee.

"Go on," said Roxy, sliding the present closer to Emily so that it bumped into her knee. "Open it up. It's Christmas, and for today, we're your family. You deserve a present."

the rest of the guests watched without a word as Emily unwrapped her present to reveal a shimmering pink jumper with a brown 'E' that matched the dark brown of Emily's eyes. When Emily just sat there, not reacting or saying anything, Roxy grabbed the clothing item from her hands and pulled it over the brunette's head. It was—as with all of Grandmum's sewn creations—a perfect fit.

"See?" called James from his seat, grinning at Emily, who blushed in response. "You're one of _us_ now. No trade backs, no returns. Once you're a Weasley, you're a Weasley for _life_. And look, there's even one in there for Faith, too, because she's a little baby Weasley."

"I've charmed it to grow with her through the year. You know how quickly the little ones can grow up in such a short time and I'd hate for the jumper to get only a few wears out of it." Grandmum gave Emily one of her famous eye-twinkling smiles and it was obvious that there was no turning back. Once Molly Weasley claimed you as one of hers, you were part of the family no matter what from thereon out.

Emily rubbed at her eyes, which were quickly turning red and puffy from tears. Roxy leant in to give the older woman a hug, wondering, somewhat sadly, if they could have had this moment five years ago instead, with Freddie by her side and a ring sparkling on Emily's finger. This was almost as good, though. Emily was still part of the family now.

Roxy finally had the sister she'd always wanted.

But more importantly, Emily and Faith had a family.

* * *

Tilly, Jo, and Roxy were all shoved beside one another at dinner, much to the discomfort of the three girls—or rather, to the discomfort of Roxy and Tilly, but the annoyance of Jo, who kept grumbling under her breath that she'd had enough of Longbottom to last her a lifetime and didn't really appreciate having to be near the brunette for an entire meal. Tilly only rolled her eyes in response and repeatedly exclaimed that she no more wanted to sit near them than they did with her. Roxy might have attempted to keep the peace between them had she not been so focused on helping Faith—who sat to Roxy's immediate left—with her plate of food, assisting the nearly five year old in keeping everything balanced and _on_ the plate, rather than the table cloth or the floor or wherever else Faith kept trying to get it all over.

As always, Grandmum had outdone herself for Christmas dinner. Three stuffed turkeys, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, carrots, turnip, parsnips, roast beef, and to end it all off, a Christmas pudding so large around that it dominated the centre of the table once it had been brought out. Everyone tried a slice or two—Uncle Percy more than that, which led to much mocking by his brothers and sister—and declared that this year's feast was, if possible, even better than the year before.

"You've truly outdone yourself this time, Molly," declared Andromeda Tonks, which made Grandmum turn pink with pride. If there was anything that Molly Weasley enjoyed more than preparing dinner for a large group, it was seeing the satisfied looks on their faces once the meal was over.

"I don't think I can eat another bite, to be honest," said Aunt Hermione, patting her stomach lightly. She hadn't eaten much, Roxy noticed, just a few bites of everything where, in the past, Aunt Hermione would have eaten twice as much as she had tonight. Perhaps her aunt just didn't feel well, or something of that nature. After all, the food was good.

"Perhaps someone could start the cleaning up now?" suggested Granddad, looking pointedly in the direction of James and Louis, who were dripping in various pieces of food; a scoop of mashed potatoes dripped out of James' hair as Granddad spoke. "I would recommend our two little food army men over here help out since they seemed to enjoy playing around so much.

"What? But that isn't fair—" James started to protest, but he quickly fell silent after seeing the sharp look his mum threw him. "Fine," he grumbled, standing up. "Lou and I will clean up."

"The muggle way, of course," said Uncle Bill with a smirk. Aunt Ginny nodded in agreement, flicking a bit of parsnip off of her shirt that had landed on her in the middle of the two Weasley boys' food fight.

"But Dad!" cried Louis. "That'll take _forever_! There're so many plates!"

"Probably should have thought about that _before_ you started playing around with your food like toddlers instead of eating it like normal twenty-something year olds would do. Now, come on, it's time for you two to get to work. There's a lot to do."

* * *

It was a while later that evening after they had finished dinner and her cousins had finally finished clearing everything away that Tilly approached Roxy once more. Roxy was still wearing her jumper and was exhausted from a day full of noisy people and good food. She wasn't sure she had the patience right then to deal with Tilly, but the other girl would not take no for an answer, following Roxy from the kitchen to the sitting room before finally cornering Roxy when she got up to use the toilet.

"What, Longbottom?" Roxy snapped, whirling around to glare at Tilly though the Ravenclaw was hardly intimidated by such a tiny girl as Roxy, even if she _was_ a Slytherin.

"You said we were going to talk after dinner. It's after dinner now, isn't it?" asked the brunette, putting her hand on the wall in a manner that was clearly meant to discourage Roxy from trying to run off once more, which probably would have—in a normal situation, of course—only made Roxy laugh, but she saw the serious expression on Tilly's face and paused.

This was not merely a school bully come back into her life to mess with Roxy some more. This was something else, something far larger than the antagonistic of two ex-school girls. So she kept quiet and let Tilly talk.

"Your hunt for ghosts—Roxy, you've been looking in all the wrong places for them. Flourish and Blotts isn't going to help you, the Librarian can't do anything and _won't_ do anything, either—and yes, I know you were sent to him as well—and Sybill Trelawney isn't exactly known as a lying kook for nothing. They're steps in the right direction, but they aren't quite enough to...to get the answers that you _want_. But I can help you, see because I have been entrusted with certain information and been given access to even more. I know what's going on in this world and you..." she took a deep breath, "you need to know all of it because you are at the centre of it all. You are the key to our survival."

"What?"

Was Tilly crazy? Was she—why was everyone losing their mind all of a sudden? First Lucy and now Tilly Longbottom? What was wrong with the world?

"Roxy, listen to me. I know what you're thinking, but I'm not mad. _We're_ not mad, we never were, as preposterous as all of this is sounding to you right now, no doubt. But what happened to Lucy and Kieran? What will happen to countless more unless someone does something about it? It's all part of something far larger than ourselves. Everything is changing now, and I know you can feel it, probably even better than I can, since they've been trying so hard to get ahold of you while I'm just...just one more target in the grand scheme of things. But _you_?" She laughed and shook her head, clearly barely even able to believe her own words. " _You're_ important to them, Roxy. You mean something for their 'return'. And yeah, by the way, that's also true, despite what everyone's been saying our whole lives. Because the ghosts? See, here's the thing...the ghosts—they're coming back, Roxy. They're coming back, and it's not for a good reason that they've returned."

Roxy suddenly felt very faint.


	29. Tilly Longbottom makes a new friend

_10 October, 2028_

Tilly Longbottom—Matilda exclusively to her mother when she was being of a particularly obstinate nature—had just begun her fourth month in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, having signed on to work with them two weeks before had actually graduated from Hogwarts.

She'd thought that the eagerness of her being hired so quickly meant that she would be given a nice job, maybe something with a nice and important sounding title, but it was now October and she was still essentially a glorified secretary, being sent to and fro to collect any little thing the older employees could think of to send her off to find, as well as handling and processing the dozens of memos that were sent to her department every single day.

Working and living on her own as an actual adult was turning out to be far from what she always imagined it would be once she graduated. Her parents made adulthood look so easy—they didn't have to pay rent every month on a flat the size of her dorm from Hogwarts. They didn't have to take orders from a group of pretentious jerks who called her 'little miss' and send her to order and bring lunch back every day from the canteen downstairs.

Honestly!

Working at the Ministry, one could barely tell that it was the twenty-first century, the way the males in her office treated her some days.

So perhaps she had been a bit too optimistic about her future. Maybe she hadn't planned everything out properly and was now paying for her arrogance. But she was raised to expect nothing less as the eldest child of esteemed war heroes, one of whom was the Head of Gryffindor, the Deputy Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the middle of his twenty-third year as the Herbology professor.

And her mum wasn't too shabby either, running The Leaky Cauldron as well as serving as the part-time assistant matron in the hospital wing up at Hogwarts whenever she could find the time.

They had raised her to believe that anything was possible, that her dreams were achievable no matter what was the obstacle. But they had forgotten to mention—or perhaps she had forgotten to listen—that her dreams would not be easily achieved. Succeeding as an adult was nothing like succeeding as a student of Hogwarts.

People expected Ravenclaws to be smart, to do well at school, so her high grades were never really much to feel accomplished about. It was the same way when she was made a Prefect in her fifth year, or scored twelve O.W.L.S., or being given the position of Head girl, or ranking first in her graduating class. Those things had always been expected, so when they finally did happen to her, Tilly did not truly consider them to be proper accomplishments. It was just another part of her life that was occurring right on schedule, as they were always meant to happen.

"Hey, Longbottom, you got a moment to spare?" one of the older employees—though not by much since he was barely even twenty—named Timothy Howards placed a hand on her desk, grinning down at her in a way that Tilly might have described as a leer, if she could ever bring herself to be bold enough to call him out on it.

"What do you want, Tim?" she asked as politely as she could, though, in reality, all that Tilly wanted to do was grind her teeth as loudly as possible until he went away.

"So listen, they've put me on this assignment because I'm one of the newer guys, see? My goodness, isn't office politics amazing?" Tilly gave him a stony look, saying nothing; he finally coughed awkwardly a few times before continuing on. "See, the thing is, I'm totally swamped right now, you see? So there's not any time to give towards this new assignment while I'm still flooded with older assignments. See?"

"You say 'see' a lot," was her only response. This was not the first time since she'd been hired that Tilly had had work pawned off onto her by other employees looking for an easy way out. She knew how to deal with these situations now.

'Oh, well." He was thrown off by her passive answer, but recovered quickly enough, giving Tilly a smooth smile. "So will you help a friend out? It's just a quick interview with some guy not much older than you or I. He's a bit off, see, thinks he's a ghost. Touched in the head, I swear, but not anything dangerous, see? You wouldn't even spend half an hour with him—just run through the standard questions and then send him onto St Mungo's for a full psych eval, which I'm sure he'll fail, see, 'cause he thinks he's a ghost?"

"Yes, I see." Her lack of emotion continued to throw Tim, who could only furrow his brown in confuse as a response. "So there are standard questions to ask a species that has been proven time and time again to no longer exist? Why? What would be the point of it?"

"Oh, those questions are more than twenty years old, at least. See, they hate throwing things out around here, though, so we still have 'em. They're supposed to be a 'just in case' sort of scenario, I guess? Do you see what I mean?

"Right." Tilly pretended to brush an imaginary piece of dust off of her desk, refusing to make eye contact with her co-worker. How long would it be—how long until they stopped shoving jobs onto her only when no one else wanted them? How long until they started to take her seriously and begin treating her like an actual employee of this department?

"So will you take it? I don't even need to put your name on the top of the paperwork if you don't want me to. No one would ever have to know you even helped out, you see?"

"Yes, I'll take it." She stood up, grabbing her wand before levelling a disgusted roll of the eyes at Tim. "And obviously, I'll be signing my name to the paperwork. Why else would I even bother taking on an extra assignment if not to receive credit and recognition for it? After all, I'm not exactly some naive little Hufflepuff."

"Oh." this was clearly not the outcome that Tim had expected, but Tilly wasn't going to let this opportunity slip from her grasp. If she handled things well, maybe the higher ups would start to treat her with a little more respect and give her actual assignments to work on instead of just having her interrogate kooks that thought they were dead.

"Hey, Tim?" she asked just after brushing past him on her way down the hall. "The dude's corporeal, right? You can touch him just fine, same as you or I?"

"Uh, yeah?" he muttered. "Like I said, the guy is a total nut job."

"Right, of course he is." She sighed, summoning her quills and parchment. "After all, they always are." With that, she swept off to interrogate the 'ghost', leaving behind a very confused Timothy Howards.

The man inside the interrogation room—the younger employees had been asked to call it the 'questioning centre' to make it seem less hostile, but Tilly mostly referred to it as the 'hell hole'—was in his early twenties, with scruffy dark hair, a narrow face, and amused hazel eyes.

He didn't look crazy or deranged; mostly, he appeared to find his present situation humorous, as he would look around the padded room and then down to the magical binds around his wrists and ankles before chuckling to himself.

But then again, it was usually the ones that appeared to be sane that were so often hiding the greatest sources of madness underneath.

'Hello," she said cautiously, sliding into the chair that had been provided for her on the other side of the table. She didn't want to appear wary or anything less than confident in front of this man, but he apparently noticed the slight tremor in her voice and the trembling of her hands because he looked her over with a smirk playing across his lips.

"So they send little kids to interrogate the lunatics now do they?" his voice was raspy and low; Tilly conjured a glass of water, letting it hover in front of him so that he could take a sip and soothe his throat. "Well, I must say that you're a hell of a lot nicer than those guys that dragged me in here. A lot prettier, too." He winked.

"You think you're dead." Tilly blurted out, turning red in the cheeks. "I—I mean, you don't look dead," she explained, "and last time I checked, ghosts don't drink water, especially they don't typically, you know, need to."

He chuckled and shrugged, as if his being dead or not was not exactly the issue at hand here. "They also told me that it was the year two thousand and twenty-eight. Now how crazy does that sound?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

"It—it is twenty twenty-eight, though. Don't you know that?"

"Ah, part of the conspiracy as well, are you? That's fine. Not quite sure how the Death Eaters talked a pretty girl such as yourself into believing something like that, but," he sighed, "oh well, I guess. You win some and you lose some."

"What—what year do you think it is?" asked Tilly nervously. He was truly was mad, wasn't he, with no grasp of time or history. Didn't he know that all the Death Eaters were either in Azkaban, deceased, or so old that they could barely lift up a wand without having to stop to catch their breath? Their war had been thirty years ago, long before her time.

"It's nineteen eighty-one, last time I checked the calendar, which was this morning, for your information. October thirty-first, nineteen eighty-one. My little boy jut turned fifteen months this morning, did you know?"

She was at a loss for words, gaping at the lunatic before her. Sure, on second glance, his clothes did seems bit outdated and his haircut—or lack thereof, rather—hadn't been in style for decades, but maybe that was just part of his act, a symptom of the same psychosis that helped to convince him that he was living almost fifty years in the past. After all, if he'd really been in his twenties back in nineteen eighty-one, wouldn't that make him almost seventy years old? And this guy was definitely not seventy.

"Hey, you okay?" the man asked, leaning as far forwards as his bonds would allow him. "You look shocked. I didn't mean to scare you or anything like that, I was only just trying to answer your question, no need to pass out on me, nothing dramatic like that."

Tilly felt a shiver of apprehension pass through her. "I don't know if you're trying to play me or if you're actually mental, but you're wrong. It's only October tenth and the year is twenty twenty-eight."

"Why do you say it like that?" He tilted his head thoughtfully.

"Like what?"

"'Twenty twenty-eight'. Wouldn't it be two thousand and twenty-eight? Two-zero-two-eight?"

"That's just how everyone says it, I'm not sure why, nor why it would be strange to you, especially since you're only a few years older than me."

He appeared to be doing quick calculations in his head. "No, I think I'd be a lot older than you, actually. You were born in, what, two thousand and nine?"

"Twenty-ten."

"Okay, so that would make you fifty years younger than me. I was, after all, born in March of nineteen-sixty." He chuckled, more to himself than Tilly. "Well, I guess Harry isn't much of a baby any more, now is he? He'd be, what, forty-eight? Older than I appear to be right now."

"Harry?" She paused once more, scanning the unsettling man in front of her far more carefully than she had initially.

His hair was the same shade of jet as her 'Uncle' Harry and his son, Albus. He had the same slender nose and strong jaw as them as well. Though his eyes were of the wrong colour, she remembered seeing an old photograph of James Potter, where his hazel eyes sparkled with undisguised mirth. In short, the man before her looked very much like the quite long ago dead James Potter, which didn't make sense to anyone who wasn't crazy.

It wasn't a Polyjuice potion—that didn't work if the person you were trying to imitate was already deceased. Perhaps the person in front of her was a Metamorphagus playing some sort of cruel joke for his own twisted amusement.

"If you think it's the nineteen eighties still, why'd you tell the guys who brought you in that you were dead?" she asked slowly, while inside of her brain, everything was rushing around in panic mode to make sense of what was happening.

"They told me that. When I asked how long I'd been asleep or 'out' or whatever and they told me it was the twenty-first century, I asked if I had died or something, and one of your lovely, very reassuring agents said I must have if I didn't even know what century it is. So I'm assuming that I must be dead, and this is some weird version of the afterlife where people don't know how to properly read a calendar for some reason."

"But you're corporeal," insisted Tilly, all memory of following the questions set before her long forgotten in the confusion of having a potentially real dead person sitting across from her, separated only by a shabbily made wooden table.

"It's my afterlife, isn't it? I can be just about whatever I want, I suppose."

She shook her head; none of this made any sense. Ghosts didn't have a solid form, mostly because they no longer existed, yet here was this guy in front of her, playing at being the long dead James Potter—and for what? Why would anyone go to such lengths just to fool around with the Ministry? After all, he had to know that no one would take his proclamation of being a ghost very seriously.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked in a quiet, almost breathy voice. "Why would you be so cruel as to play a joke like this? Do you think these sorts of things are funny? Dressing yourself up to look like James Potter when everyone knows he's been dead for almost fifty years—why would anyone do that? How could you be so heartless?"

She might as well have slapped him, for how quickly his face lost all of its colour; he stared at her, his mouth wide open and his eyes going wide from shock.

In the next second, though, his jaw shut so firmly that she could hear the clack of teeth hitting against each other. His eyes narrowed, his brow tightening as he shook his head. The change in expression was like seeing a completely different person struggling to emerge from the same face that had been grinning at her only minutes before.

"Why doesn't anyone ever listen?" His voice was different now—deeper, harsher, practically the growl of some wild animal, if she was feeling particularly descriptive. He was no longer entirely human, his features twisting to make him appear feral and cruel. "Who do I have to talk to, who do I have to shake and slap around until people start to finally pay attention?"

"I don't understand—"

"No, of course, you don't!" he roared, straining against his bonds as he spit and hissed at her; Tilly recoiled, truly convinced that she was dealing with some sort of a madman now. "No one gets it, no one ever understands! You puny, insignificant worms, all you ever think about is your own short lives, pointless as they all are. Who stops to think about the bigger picture, the true reason as to why you walk on this Earth so much that, even after death, all you can do is retrace your own steps? You disgust me! You snivelling worms—you're nothing! We're coming for you and oh, oh, how easy it will be to destroy you all, you silly little creatures. We will slaughter every last one of you and there is nothing—nothing—you can do to stop us. You don't have the power! Your little girls of fire and ice won't be able to save you in time!"

"Mr Potter?" she whispered, tears staining her cheeks as she looked up at him from the corner that Tilly had taken refuge in to stay out of the centre of his rampage.

He calmed once more, still tilted forwards, his head slumped against his chest as he breathed heavily. All the energy, all the life, had left him, and the only thing he could do now was let out a quiet, choking sob.

"Mr Potter?"

"I'm sorry," he whispered, looking up. Tilly nearly screamed—he was dead; his skin was peeling off and rotting, his teeth crumbled into dust, his clothes were turning into dirt-covered rags. He was a skeletal monster, a demon sitting calmly in his chair as she broke down in tears. "I'm sorry, Matilda. I didn't mean to—I didn't want to..." He shook his head. "Please, be prepared. They're coming and you, your Ministry, your whole world, isn't ready for what's coming. I'm so sorry."

With that, he disappeared into nothing, as if he'd never existed to begin with. There was no scent of his decaying body, no sign that a grown, deceased man had, just moments before, been bound to the interrogation chair.

Tilly did scream that time and scrambled for the door, running into the hallway outside in a complete panic, demanding that "someone else can take that room, but I am done for the day!"

For the first time in twenty-three years, a ghost had been found.

And worse, it knew her real name.

(Oh Merlin's pants, a dead guy had hit on her!)

It was nine days later—after she'd been given a nice "holiday" to deal with her stress-induced break down as they were calling it at work—that Tilly could be found wandering the streets of Diagon Alley, having spent the majority of the morning visiting her mum over at The Leaky. Honestly, though, Tilly could only take so much of early morning drunks and little Greg Parsons—the newly hired sixteen year old waiter who was clearly infatuated with her—following her everywhere before she needed to get away from the family pub and head out on her own for a little while. This was why she had saved up money to move out as quickly as she could. Being home was just too hectic and bothersome nowadays.

Tilly didn't have any particular destination in mind; she was just wandering around until something caught her attention.

She passed by Flourish and Blotts, and then Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, which was now being run by the original Madam Malkin's great-niece though the aged founder still came by quite frequently because she apparently missed going to work every day.

Tilly hoped that, when she got to be that old, she at least had some sort of hobby to keep her busy all day instead of bothering her relatives all the time.

She stopped briefly at the little Merlin's Café for a bite to eat, feeling like she was betraying her mother with every bite of food and every sip of tea. After all, this was not Leaky food, which Tilly had been raised on her whole life.

After finishing and paying for her meal, Tilly stepped back onto the street, pulling the hood of her jacket over her head. It had grown cold while she was inside, much colder than Tilly was expecting, even for mid-October.

When she had left The Leaky, her mum asked if Tilly was feeling okay, commenting on her daughter's pale complexion and the dark grey spots under her eyes from lack of sleep; Tilly only laughed forcefully and told her mum that she was worrying too much about nothing.

"they sent you on a paid holiday, Matilda. They told me you suffered from some sort of mental break down, claiming that you'd talked to the ghost of James Potter. That isn't exactly what I'd call nothing."

"I'm telling you, Mum, I'm fine," Tilly insisted before rushing into the crowded street outside.

She didn't want to talk about what had occurred between James Potter and herself in the interrogation room—because it had been James Potter, no matter what anyone else told her. She'd spoken to him, Tilly was confident of that fact at least, even though the detainees who'd brought him in swore they never encountered a guy matching Mr Potter's description; even if Timothy Howards had no recollection of asking her to take on an assignment of his—an assignment that no one recalled ever handing out in the first place.

But she'd spoken to James Potter, Tilly knew that she did, regardless of what anyone else said. The ghosts were coming back, and they were bring something that was major league evil along for the ride.

Tilly paused near the street sign that separated Knockturn from Diagon. She didn't have the confidence, nor suicidal nature, to go down there, at least not right at that moment. Instead, she took the opportunity to stop for a few minutes and collect her thoughts.

It was then that she saw Roxanne Weasley coming out of Knockturn, scowling over her shoulder at someone or something that was too far into the shadows for Tilly to make out.

Roxanne Weasley was definitely fairly high up on the list of people that Tilly never wanted to see again after graduation. Uncle Harry's birthday had been awkward enough—how would Weasley react if she knew that Tilly was aware that the Slytherin had sneaked into Knockturn Alley of all places?

Roxy stopped at the opposite corner of the street, squinting at a red-haired girl that walked past Tilly and headed into one of the shops located on the short stretch of stores between where Roxanne and Tilly were standing. Tilly glanced up at the shop and realised it was a well-known, if shady, place that was mostly famous for catering to very young, often unwed girls who had gotten pregnant unintentionally. And the red-haired girl—Tilly caught a glimpse of her face just before she disappeared inside and she gasped. It was Lily Potter, who was only two years older than Tilly herself, and whom Tilly had always seen as a smart girl. Certainly smart enough to know not to sleep around without using protection.

But how could Lily be pregnant? How could she have been so foolish as to—

 _Talk to Roxanne Weasley talk to her go over there and say something she knows she's important go talk to her she is one of us Roxanne Weasley is on our side go speak with her go speak with her she's important to us and that means she's important to you so go over there right now and talk to her about ghosts she isn't quite sure yet about it all and you need to make her sure so that she can be brought to the right side and the future will commence as it must go talk to Roxanne Weasley go talk to Roxanne Weasley go talk to Roxanne Weasley GO TALK TO ROXANNE WEASLEY_

Tilly grabbed the side of the building next to her, feeling her head spin and her lungs burn like she had just finished running a mile. The voice that had come over her so suddenly, screaming inside of her head, was not the same animalistic one that had spoken through James a few days ago. This one was more human, expressing fear and worry in a frantic tone. It gave her the distinct feeling that time was running out to accomplish something for which she could never be prepared.

Her head still throbbed from the screaming noises that seemed to echo endlessly, but by the time that the pain had finally subsided enough for her to focus, Weasley had already disappeared—long gone, no doubt—and Tilly didn't have the energy to head all the way over to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes to find the Slytherin at that exact moment.

One thing was clear, though—she needed to talk to Roxanne Weasley, and soon.


	30. Roxy has a (drunken) revelation

Roxy received an invitation to Mia Itterman's annual New Year's party, which she'd been attending for the past four years—this year, at least, she would finally not have to make up some long-winded tale about merely spending the evening with Jo and definitely not _anyone else_. This year, at long, long last, she was out of school, which meant that mum couldn't tell her "no" if Roxy wanted to go out for the night.

She spent nearly an hour getting ready just to make sure that she looked good; shower, shave, pick out an outfit, struggle with her hair, change her outfit, get a bit to eat, pull her shoes out from the back of the closet, switch into a third outfit, give up on her hair, floo-call Jo to make sure they would still be going together, and then finally give up and put on the first outfit that Roxy had picked out.

Her dress was a tight, sparkly silver colour that reached just above her knees and matched nicely with a pair of heels that were maybe a little too much for her, but hell, Roxy was on the shorter side and she was going to take every centimetre she could get.

But there was still that underlying feeling of guilt—that Kieran should be going to this party with them as well. It had always been the three of them together, laughing and joking and dancing wildly after they drank too much. Things could not be the same if Kieran was not able to come with them this year.

He was now one of _four_ victims—two males and two females, all under the age of twenty-five, and of quite different walks of life. They didn't appear to have anything in common to link them together, as far as the Aurors could see; no job, no Hogwarts house, no lifestyle that might connect the four in a definitive way.

After the third victim, someone at _The Daily Prophet_ had discovered the sudden 'trend', as they described it, of young people who were harming themselves for no apparent reason, and, spurred on by the fact that the first known victim was a member of the Weasley family, hastily written articles about the strange behaviour of this newly matured generation, blaming the usual combination of an influx of poor music and the over-saturation of muggle culture on what the media was now—quite uncreatively—calling the ' _Sectumsempra_ situation'.

Poor Kara had left Hogwarts a full two weeks earlier than everyone else following the first article because of the number of students that began bothering her at all hours just to make sure that she either _didn't_ hurt herself as well or to make sure that they were there to witness everything unfold when she finally _did_.

Roxy shook her head, wanting to focus on enjoying herself at the party, instead of letting her thoughts be consumed by all of her problems. Like everyone kept telling her, worrying about the victims wasn't going to make them recover all of a sudden. And besides that, she deserved a night off to just relax.

There was a quiet knock at her bedroom door just before Mum cracked the door open to wave at her. "Hey, just wanted to check when you were planning to leave."

"In a few minutes, I think. Jo said she wants to meet me at The Leaky Cauldron and we're supposed to floo from there together. And before you ask—because I know you will—we're going to Mia Itterman's flat. She's Muhammed's older sister, y'know, that guy from my house, and Mia is that short Indian girl that's best friends with Vic, but she's four times as fun since she's not a boring old mum who doesn't know what Butterbeer is any more."

Roxy's mother did not find the last part particularly amusing, judging by the small frown she gave her daughter, but said nothing against Roxy's words; instead, she nodded a few times before disappearing once more into the hallway, shutting the door firmly behind her.

They hadn't been talking very much as of late.

Roxy wasn't sure _why_ her mum suddenly stopped socialising as much, but it certainly worried her. Mum was rarely leaving the house any more, instead choosing to sit in her room and pour over old Quidditch articles from decades ago, some written before her parents had even gotten married.

It was possible, Roxy supposed, that with the holidays and so much family around at all hours, that Mum was exhausted and had fallen into another bout of depression. This sort of thing had happened before, and it always ended eventually.

Mum would be fine, especially just for the one night.

Roxy shook her head, looked herself over one last time—her hair was going to do what it wanted and she'd already spent far too much time on her clothes—then decided she looked decent enough for a party that would mostly contain people who were ages and older than her and wildly drunk.

Roxy grinned at her reflection and headed out, ready to be the fun party-girl once again that she had been just this summer.

* * *

By the time that Roxy and Jo finally arrived at Mia's party, it was already in full swing. These events always went the same way—with drinks made available in every room, music blasting from radios, and so many people who were packed together that it felt like there simply wasn't enough oxygen for them all.

The two girls were hit by the wall of sound from inside even while still climbing the stairs, having to weave their way through the couples making out against the cold metal railing.

"You know, Lily's probably pissed she couldn't come tonight!" Jo shouted over the blaring noise. Roxy shrugged but nodded. "She's always wanted to go to one of these New Year's parties, hasn't she, and now she can't because of that stupid baby!"

Lily was almost seven months pregnant now, her stomach bowing out so much that it was difficult for her to see her own shoes as well as giving her massive back pain. Roxy could only imagine how much larger her cousin would get between now and April.

But being pregnant meant that the twenty year old could not safely attend a party full of alcohol, drugs, and skeevy drunken guys, so Aunt Ginny had ordered her daughter to stay home for the night under the threat of a Bat-Boogey Hex, which Aunt Ginny was well known for using when she was mad.

"She's the one who got herself pregnant, and besides, Aunt Ginny is right about this one—a party as wild as Mia's usually are would never be safe for a nearly seven months pregnant young woman." Roxy sighed as they reached the top step nearly stumbling over a blank-faced male sitting by himself and wearing only boxers despite the cold.

Roxy peered down a the guy, whose eyes were wide and empty—it was Tolkien himself, looking just as high as the last time Roxy had seen him, back in July. Was he still using that strange drug of his, the one he referring to as having the result of 'time tripping'?

He was mumbling to himself, wringing his hands as he twisted his head back and forth.

"Tolkien?" Jo muttered in a bewildered tone, leaning down to wave her hand in front of his face. The older male didn't react, but instead merely leant forward to mumble incoherently. "Where d'you suspect his clothes have gone—or how long he's been out here in the cold?"

"Dunno, but we should probably take him inside with us. _I'm_ certainly freezing in this short dress, so he must practically be an icicle by now."

"You're going to help your cousin's ex-boyfriend? The one she broke up with after he told her that he wasn't interested in having kids even though she was pregnant?"

"That doesn't meet we should let him stay out here and suffer from hypothermia. Besides, Lily is the one who doesn't like him—Tolkien has always been nice enough to me, so I have nothing really against him personally."

"If you say so."

They each grabbed one of Tolkien's arms and struggled to lift the much taller and heavier boy between them, carrying him slowly towards the inside of the flat; things were only louder inside, as too, any bodies in not enough space pressed against each other. Jo shot Roxy a look that said 'where are we supposed to put him?' Shrugging, Roxy tilted her head in the direction of one of the few unoccupied seats in the sitting room, and they dragged him over, dropping Tolkien's limp, heavy form into the chair.

Roxy's arms hurt from holding up a guy who was more than twice her weight, but at least now Tolkien wouldn't freeze to death on the top step leading to Mia's flat.

Their mission accomplished, the two girls joined the fray, drinking and partying and generally letting loose. They danced with each other and with Muhammed, who was very awkward and clumsy but smiled when Jo kissed him on the cheek, his whole face going a deep red. Roxy, following a number of cups of Firewhiskey too high for her to remember, began to feel like everything around her was changing colour and was beginning to float upwards, but she only laughed and downed another cup as fast as she could.

Roxy was trying to block everything out—her friends in St Mungo's, Tilly Longbottom wanting to drag her to the Ministry next week to talk about ghosts, her mother shuffling around the flat in her bathrobe while letting the toast burn.

She danced and drank, flirting and kissing with whoever was closest, and pretended like she was just a normal nineteen year old girl living a normal life just like the majority of the other party-goers.

Roxy was happy.

Roxy was normal.

Roxy was fine.

* * *

Tolkien woke to find himself sitting by a warm fire, wearing nothing but an old pair of boxers that he'd been wearing for going on three days.

He could not immediately place where he was at that exact moment, but after soaking in the loud music and screaming, drunk people, Tolkien remembered that Mia Itterman, a tiny Gryffindor seven years older than he, was throwing a New Year's party and that Tolkien had decided to attend with his mates whilst on four different kinds of drug, both muggle and magic.

On top of that, he had decided to also consume a small amount of the drug that Tolkien enjoyed so much ever since discovering it over the summer, which he was now choosing to refer to as 'timtrip' or 'time trip' due to its tendency to make the user hallucinate and piece together old memories, even ones they didn't or couldn't recall beforehand. He was hoping to someday convince the Ministry to use the drug, which he had improved up since the batch that was snatched off of Matthias Fletcher and now came in both powdered and liquid form, to retrieve memories form convicted criminals and the like, but for now he mostly used it to enjoy memories of being a little kid that didn't have any worries at all.

His friends had apparently disappeared somewhere into the throbbing crowd of party-goers; he was surprised they'd even had the common decency to bring him back inside. Tolkien's friends were usually more like to just leave him wherever he decided to squat down, which had resulted in him—many times—waking up with a massive hangover and discovering he'd vomited all over his lap, amongst other places.

So maybe, at least this one time, they had chosen to be slightly better people than he gave them credit for.

Tolkien groaned in pain when he tried to push himself out of the chair, discovering that it was much harder than he expected it to be; his whole body felt like it was filled with lead, and when he shifted his weight even slightly to see if there was any way to get up that _didn't_ cause immense suffering, the only result was the he fell from the seat onto the old and greatly stained carpet.

"Are you okay?"

there was an unfamiliar male standing over him, peering down at Tolkien with a smirk on his face. His hazel eyes and scruffy dark hair was unfamiliar to Tolkien, but there was something about this guy that made him feel immediately at ease like this stranger was familiar to Tolkien as his best friend.

Here was a guy who could be trusted.

"I'm fine. Just need t' ge' me legs back in workin' order and I'll be fine." Despite his protests, Tolkien gratefully took the stranger's proferred hand and allowed himself to be pulled up and helped back into his seat. This guy was much stronger than his wiry frame hinted at.

"I'm James, by the way," he informed Tolkien, giving him an easy smile that almost seemed to ease the pain in Tolkien's legs just a little bit faster. "I hear that your name is Tolkien Smith and that you're a guy of talent and information."  
"You hear' righ'. I'm an en'repeneur in—in jus' about' any'hing you coul' wan'. Alcohol, drugs, pre'y girls, I can ge' I' all for you, if that's why you're in'eres'ed in me."

"Oh, no thanks," james replied with a small laugh. "I usually try to stay sober as often as I can and besides that, my wife would kill me I indulged in any of those sorts of things." He held up his hand to point out the small gold ring wrapped around his finger.

"Why'd you come t' Mia's par'y then, if y' no' in'eres'ed in any o' this stu'?"

"Why do you talk like that when it's not what you truly sound like? You and I both know your parents taught you how to speak properly, Tolkien Smith," James retorted.

Tolkien was left speechless; he'd been speaking in his twisted accent for years as a way of separating himself from the rest of his family, just one more way that he could find to make him stand out amongst six sons. But no one had ever called him out on his false manner of speaking until now.

For the first time in ten years, Tolkien dropped his adopted accent. "How did you—how could you even possibly know that? Did you talk to one of my brothers, or—I mean, how could you possibly know something like that?"

"I have my ways. I know lots of things about a lot of people. For instance, I know that you have five older brothers, four of whom make up two sets of twins. I know that you were a Slytherin at Hogwarts and that you coasted through school all seven years because you forced yourself to keep up this image of not being able to care about anything at all because of how distant you felt your parents always were—oh, and most importantly, you got Lily Potter pregnant."

Tolkien's head spun and he wondered to himself if, perhaps, the drugs hadn't yet completely worn off and this whole conversation was a mere hallucination. He _hoped_ it was.

This man had just given Tolkien a list of information that no one else in the world could claim to known in its entirety; sure, everyone knew about his brothers and the Weasleys obviously had to know by now about Lily, though that information had not yet been released to the public, as far as Tolkien was aware.

But no one knew about his parents. No one was aware of the lengths that Tolkien had gone to over the last eleven years to separate himself from the rest of the Smith family, to individualise himself so that people thought of Tolkien for what _he_ had done, rather than what his brothers or his parents accomplished.

"Have you been stalking me?" Tolkien demanded; the trusting, easy feeling was gone entirely now. All he wanted to do was grab this guy by the shoulders and shake him wildly.

"What?" James laughed and rolled his eyes, like following Tolkien around and collecting his life's secrets was the silliest thing that James had ever heard of. "No, I have not been _stalking_ you, Mr Smith. Like I said, I'm very good at finding out information concerning other people. Especially when that information, in turn, concerns the Weasley and Potter families."

"Well you're just fucking creepy, aren't you—" He froze, eyes going wide as a searing pain struck his head, making everything feel like it was on fire and was being compressed into a small ball of nothing all at the same time.

 _Talk to Roxanne Weasley talk to her go over there and say something she knows she's important go talk to her she is one of us Roxanne Weasley is on our side go speak with her go speak with her she's important to us and that means she's important to you so go over there right now and talk to her about ghosts she isn't quite sure yet about it all and you need to make her sure so that she can be brought to the right side and the future will commence as it must go talk to Roxanne Weasley go talk to Roxanne Weasley go talk to Roxanne Weasley GO TALK TO ROXANNE WEASLEY_

Tolkien fell to the floor once again, holding his head between his hands and screaming loudly. The voice shrieking at him was completely overwhelming, causing Tolkien intense pain to the point where his vision blurred and he thought he might lose his mind entirely.

The other party-goers stopped what they were doing to turn and stare at the howling youth who was clutching his head as well as sobbing at nothing to " _make it stop, make it stop, please, I'm begging you, I can't handle this, make it stop!_ "

A murmur rippled through the growing crowd—wasn't that Tolkien Smith who was crying and screaming into the carpet? What was wrong with him?

But then they remembered that Tolkien was most predominantly known for being an offbeat small time drug addict. He'd probably just taken too much of something and was suffering from a particularly bad trip. That was really on him, though, wasn't it? And it'd go away eventually, so who really cared if Tolkien was screaming his head off? Nothing he was seeing was real.

They turned the music up and kept dancing; everyone was far too intoxicated to care about Tolkien, who was curled up in the foetal position on the floor, completely alone, with absolutely no one around that cared about him.

Even James was gone as easily as if he had never been there in the first place.

* * *

Roxy could hear screaming from somewhere else in the flat, but it was too faint to tell from _where_ , exactly, it was coming from and her head was spinning far too much for her to properly focus on the noise. She'd consumed quite a bit more Firewhiskey than she really expected to drink tonight, so it was quite difficult to make herself pay attention to very much that was going on around her.

Instead, she was currently struggling to lean against one of the counter tops in Mia's kitchenette and stared at—oh, she'd forgotten his name. Ryan? Bryce? There was definitely a 'y' somewhere in his name, she thought, but Roxy couldn't remember for the life of her what it actually was.

Oh well.

Besides, names weren't important when it came to having fun and she was certainly having a _lot_ of fun listening to what's-his-name tell her all about—something. His job, maybe? She could barely make out what he was saying above the pounding music and what little she _could_ hear was just a jumbled mess to her alcohol-filled mind.

One thing she could say for certain though was that at least what's-his-name was cute.

Probably.

His face kept blurring and his features were changing themselves—which was obnoxious, considering she was trying to figure out was he looked like—but Roxy was pretty sure that he was definitely cute.

Who was making all that noise next door in—was it the sitting room?

The noise sounded like loud sobbing or something along those lines but that didn't make a lot of sense. After all, this was a party and people were supposed to be _happy_ at parties, weren't they? They certainly weren't supposed to cry so loudly that you could hear them over the dull roar of people and the blaring music that filled Mia's flat.

It just didn't make any sense.

"Sorry, Ricky," she told the guy who'd been talking to her. "I have to—to go find out where that weird noise is coming from."

"What noise?" he asked irritably, but she didn't answer, instead choosing to wander off in the direction that she thought the noise was located. "Hey, where are you going? Hey! You crazy drunk bitch. And my name isn't _Ricky_ , it's _Tyler_!"

She waved amicably at him over her shoulder and kept going, looking around for anyone who seemed to be crying instead of laughing. So far, no one she'd passed in the kitchenette fit that description, but Roxy was determined to hunt down the source of the noise and find out why anyone would ever make a sound like that.

"Roxanne Weasley!" called out a male voice from behind her, but Roxy ignored him in favour of pressing onwards, assuming that it was the guy she'd just been talking to. "Hey, Roxanne Weasley, I need to talk to you! It's really important."

"Not right now, Tommy. I have to figure out who's making that awful sobbing noise."

"What? I'm not—who's Tommy? I—never mind, that isn't what's important here. Listen, I need to—hey, can you stop for a moment and just listen to me?"

Roxy walked even faster, wondering why the hallways seemed so long. Surely the flat couldn't be _this_ large, right? Even Mia wouldn't be able to fund a place as big as it appeared to be to Roxy at that moment.

"Roxanne Weasley, will you just listen to me for a few minutes? My name is James and I have very important information for you about what you've recently learned about ghosts. Please, it's very important that you listen to me!"

She stopped walking and instead turned around to sate at the male, placing her hands on her hips in what Roxy hoped was a threatening manner. "What do you want? There's some poor person here who is crying and _I_ am trying to find them so I can find out the reason why."

James rolled his eyes. "That's just Tolkien Smith, he's in the sitting room next door."

"Tolkien? But why's he crying? I—I helped bring him inside because it's cold outside and I didn't want him to get sick."  
"Kid had a bit of a scare. Guess we came on a little too strong. Oh well." James sighed quietly. "But that's not what's important here. I've come to talk to you about ghosts—and I _will_ talk to you, finally. Your brother's been trying to reach out to you for months, but I guess he isn't strong enough to properly get your attention yet."

"My brother?"

Roxy's brother was dead. He'd died—a long time ago, wasn't it? Something to do with Quidditch, she was pretty sure. How was he supposed to talk to her if he was dead?

"Yes, your brother. He's not been deceased as long as I have, which can certainly have its benefits—he can better focus on what's going on in the world of the living, as evidenced by the last time I tried to talk to anyone on this plane of existence. But _I_ can focus my presence more easily than he can since I've had a lot more time to practise it."

"You're a ghost?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes, I am."

He didn't look much like a ghost. Roxy pushed against his chest and was met only with a solid wall of flesh. Definitely not very ghost-like, in her opinion. Really, james looked more like he could be one of Uncle Harry's kids, with his messy dark hair and thin frame. Except for the hazel eyes, James did actually look remarkably similar to Albus—they could have actually passed for fraternal twins or something.

"You aren't a ghost," she told him in a determined voice. "I don't know _who_ you are, but you aren't a ghost. You look nothing like ghosts do and—and besides that, ghosts don't even exist any more. I'm not stupid, I know you aren't a ghost. And I know you're lying about my brother because he's dead, he's been dead for a while now which means he _can't_ be trying to contact me. You're a liar, that's all that you are. A liar."

"No, Roxanne, I'm not lying to you. I truly _am_ deceased. My name was James Augustus Potter. I was born on the twenty-seventh of March in the year nineteen-sixty. I died at age twenty-one on the thirty-first of October in nineteen eighty-one. I have been doing everything that I can to find a way through the veil ever since those of us who had passed were expelled from this world entirely and now I have finally found a way. But my time is limited here—i will be caught and forced to depart soon enough, but until then, I must tell you the truth about what happened to all of us ghosts."

"I don't understand," she protested, feeling queasy. The happy, drunk feeling was gone and all she was left with was confusion and fear. Her conversation with Tilly over Christmas floated to the top of Roxy's mind and she remembered that they were planning on the visiting the archives at the Ministry.

Ghosts. Ghosts were real. She was _talking_ to an actual ghost right now.

"Please, Roxy, there isn't very much time for us to talk, so I really must hurry. There is so much I want to tell you—especially about your niece."

"Faith?"

"Yes, Faith. She is essential to—" James Potter disappeared very suddenly, leaving behind a very bewildered Roxy.

She really needed another drink.

"TEN!"

"NINE!"

"EIGHT!"


	31. Happy Birthday to Faith

It was weird how the entire world as she knew it could be different and yet, to everyone else around her, things were exactly the same as they always were.

Mum didn't know about the ghosts. She didn't know that Roxy had met James Potter and learned that her brother was wandering the earth in a vain attempt to get Roxy—anyone, really—to notice him. Mum didn't know that everything that they knew about the last twenty-three years was a complete lie.

Most importantly, Mum didn't know that everyone that she loved most in this world might die very soon at the hands of some dark creature that Tilly could only describe to Roxy as "the purest embodiment of absolute evil".

So—probably _not_ a friend.

Perhaps if Mum _had_ known these things, she wouldn't have dragged Roxy to a birthday party held in honour of a five year old girl.

* * *

January fourth was Faith's fifth birthday and was being hosted—much to Molly's great pleasure—at the Burrow. Emily, along with her fiancée Kinsley, had been hesitant at first, to be the one that so quickly threw themselves back into the mix of Weasleys, but Grandmum insisted incessantly until Emily finally caved in and let the Weasley matriarch throw Faith a birthday party with all of the various members of the family arriving to shower the little girl with presents and birthday congratulations.

Faith didn't appear to mind at all that she had just been here only eleven days ago; she was much too busy squealing with happiness at the sight of the large stack of presents waiting for her piled on top of the kitchen table.

Remy was following her around, begging Faith to let him unwrap one of her presents or be allowed to blow out, at least, _one_ candle on her cake when the time came; Faith only continued to giggle at him in response and rushed off somewhere else in the house instead of giving him an answer of any real value.

The two cousins, since their first meeting back at Roxy's graduation party, had become close friends very quickly, as young children were likely to do. They enjoyed playing together as often as they could, leading to their mothers pairing up to plan out trips to local parks in London or to Shell Cottage to play on the beach side. Remy and Faith were madly in love—just like the children they were—flirting innocently, with no clue what the meaning of their words truly even was. Perhaps when they were older—in ten years, if they were lucky; only five if they were not—their friendship would dull to something a little more common for second cousins. Or maybe, if they were one of the luckiest little ducks, they would stay fabulous friends for the rest of their days, but none of that really mattered right now.

It was in the future, after all. A future that was as of yet undetermined whether or not it would ever _happen_. Today, though, they were five—and nearly five—and they were as madly in love as two friends could be.

"Aunt Roxy!" Faith cried when she noticed Roxy standing by the front door with a neatly wrapped present in her hands.

The little girl ran quickly over to her young aunt and threw her arms around Roxy's waist. She was surprisingly tall, especially for a girl only just now five years old. Roxy could already imagine how tall her niece would be at age fifteen—the idea of being shorter than this child before her made the nineteen year old wince internally.

"Hello, Fai," Roxy said, putting an arm around her niece and bent over to give the birthday girl a kiss on the cheek. She handed the little girl her present, which made Faith squeal with happiness. "Your mum's probably already told you all about waiting to unwrap your presents, so just put that one on the top of the stack, yeah? But make sure it's the very first one you open or Aunt Roxy will be very upset."

Faith nodded, turning very serious, and carried the box over to the kitchen table, where she set it carefully on top of the stack, before turning back to her aunt with a big smile on her face, reverting back to the playful little child that she truly was.

"Aren't they just absolutely adorable together?" asked Victoire as Faith and Remy ran up the stairs to continue playing. "Faith certainly has me reconsidering Teddy's constant request to try for a little girl. I keep telling him that he doesn't really know what little girls are like, but the fool always insists that he spent enough time around us Weasley girls that he doesn't think raising a daughter will be too difficult to handle." She shook her head fondly. "I'm tempted to ask Emily if I can borrow Faith for the weekend, just to show Teddy just how wrong he is."

"You make motherhood sound so endearing. I'm practically ready to sign up for it myself right this very second."

Victoire laughed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Oh, no, believe me when I say being a mum is absolutely wonderful and I love my boys more than anything. It's just that..." She sighed. "Being a mum—especially a _working_ mum—well, it has its ups and downs, doesn't it? Same as any other job, I suppose it could be said."

"Doesn't mean I have any intention of having kids soon, believe me."

"Oh dear Merlin, please _don't_. You're much too young and hopeful to be having children right now, Roxy. Much too young to have all your dreams ruined by the smell of a dirty nappy at three in the morning." Victoire gave her cousin a friendly smile before rushing upstairs to respond to the sound of a child's scream and the crashing noise usually associated with something very fragile breaking into a million pieces.

Roxy was left to her thoughts once again, which quickly turned back towards her most recent conversation with Tilly Longbottom—the one that involved the return of the ghosts en mass, along with their evil, unknown driving companion. Or was it _companions_? Roxy hoped not.

It just didn't make sense, though, all these rules and non-rules and whatever else decided to pop up without a proper warning. Ghosts appearing to Tilly Longbottom, to Tolkien Smith, to Faith and Lucy, for months or longer—maybe even years, if they could ever get Lucy to wake up and tell Roxy and Tilly what she had seen the night of her attack, and explain those imaginary friends of Lucy's from their childhood.

The thought almost made Roxy break down into hysterical laughter. Even a month ago, the idea of having _any_ contact with Tilly outside of an entirely hostile verbal spar was quite preposterous. Yet now, here they were, planning and plotting together. Hell, they were intending on breaking into the goddamn _Ministry archives_ in just a few week's time.

Not that any of this made Roxy any more endeared to her old Hogwarts' nemesis. Maybe Tilly wasn't—well, mortal enemy had always been too strong a word, but they certainly weren't friends, even now. The idea was enough to make Roxy gag.

There would be no singing of campfire songs or making of friendship bracelets for the two of them anytime soon, that much was certain.

"Hey look, it's the pipsqueak." She felt a heavy arm drop over her shoulder and twisted out of the grip around her front to face Lorcan Scamander in all of his sun-beaten, blond (cocky little bastard that he was) glory.

"I'm older than you, or don't you remember that?" she quipped with a playful glower aimed in his direction. If there was anything she wasn't going to let bother her right now, it was another one of Lorcan's incessant attempts to rile her up by mocking her height. "You can't call me pipsqueak when I could easily hex your arse into next week for even _thinking_ about making another bloody short joke about me. Besides, you'd think that crap was getting old after a decade and a half of the same material time after time."

He grinned at her. "I'm seventeen years old. _Nothing_ wears off for me right now. Though you are right, I'm not just here to mock your height, or rather, lack thereof." He grinned, but then stiffened in the next instance, his tone and demeanour becoming unusually serious for Lorcan. He suddenly looked much more like his twin brother, who was always so reserved and morose. "It's about your cousins Lucy, actually. Her and all those other victims."

Roxy groaned. "Oh, don't tell my _you've_ been talking to the late and great James Potter as well. I _so_ don't need any more proof of this crap, and I definitely don't have time for it right now."

"What?" He frowned, head cocked in confusion. "Has something happened to James that I don't know about? The—proof of _what_ , exactly?"

"Er, nothing. Continue on with whatever you were saying."

"Right. Ahem." He cleared his throat noisily, looking warily down at Roxy. "So your cousin and those four other victims—"

"There's only three other victims."

"Nope, you're wrong. Er," Lorcan blushed at his interruption, looking away. "What I mean is, there're not just four victims any more. There was another one admitted a few days ago. A girl about Lily's age, according to the report I found on her and the other victims. One of the few good things to come out of Mum refusing to sell off Granddad's old newspaper is that there's always just stacks and stacks of papers sitting around about everything going on in the world."

He pulled a folded-up newspaper from his pocket. It was an unprinted edition of _The Quibbler_ , which many considered to be little more than an anti-establishment version of _The Daily Prophet_ , a reputation not much helped by the fact that they mostly tended to write about the absurd and the impossible, not to mention that a large majority of the issues published each year were increasingly against Ministry policies.

"Are you sure that's any more informative than what _The Prophet_ tells us? No offence but your mum can let some pretty loony stuff by without even batting an eye." Roxy ducked her head at Lorcan's grimace, worried he might smack her, but instead, the younger male nodded, looking tired and frustrated.

"I think she might believe half the crap they still set out to print, to be honest. Mum's definitely not gotten any saner as she's aged, I can tell you that much without even batting an eye. Unlike Lysander, I don't worship the very ground Mum walks on. I can, at least, admit that any sanity she ever had long ago fled from the building."

Roxy could agree to that, though perhaps not so harshly put; Mrs Scamander was a nice lady, friendly and clever, but she was also completely out of her mind. When Roxy was a little girl, that had been what made Mrs Scamander so interesting to talk to—there was no telling what conversation topic she would bring up, even to a child. Now, though, it was just frustrating, because Roxy wanted to have a normal discussion, not discuss the sudden up-tick in the nargle count, especially since Roxy was fairly certain nargles were on the list of things that _did not really exist._

Lorcan sighed once again. "Yeah, life's never boring with Luna Scamander for a mum. But that's not what's important right now. So, get this, okay? The most recent victim, the fifth one? They found her in the lavatories at the Ministry, half-dead from blood loss. And you'd think, 'Hey, a practically dead girl found draped over one of their toilets, maybe they'd finally start looking into things', right?" Roxy nodded. "See, but the thing is, the Ministry _isn't_ properly looking into any of it. Yeah, sure, they had a couple of junior Aurors and whatnot scour the books for any information they could find, but for the most part, everyone has been treating the attacks like they're just the unfortunate result of young people being young people—'oh, what're you gonna do, this is just being kids, am I right?'"

Lorcan out a bitter laugh, shaking his head. He wasn't normally this way—bitter about everything. That was more Lysander's deal.

"So nobody cares. Same as always, right? Twenty-somethings all trying—and fortunately failing—to off themselves for reasons that nobody can explain, yet hardly an eye batted. Merlin's beard, can you believe they group me with all of those little kids every year? I mean, yeah I'm young, but I'm clearly a middle-aged man mentally if I'm already talking about how doomed we all are." Lorcan shook his head again. "You know, I really _am_ a pessimist at heart—a realist, I'm more likely to call myself though everyone else always seems to disagree. But I don't think those victims will survive and I don't think is ever going to get counted as important enough to go down in the history books, even if one of the victims _is_ both a Weasley and the daughter of a candidate for Minister. It's almost as if—as if—"

"Nobody cares any more," Roxy mumbled, meeting his pale blue eyes. "Apathy. It's been taking over our community, our world, for decades, at least since the ghosts all disappeared, but probably even longer than thought. It's like we're incapable of caring about anything else but ourselves and those who _do_ try to care beyond that little bubble have bad things happen to them. People like Lucy. Innocent people."

"People like _you_." Lorcan peered down at her, blond hair falling over his face so that she could not see his eyes.

"Like me? What do you mean?"

"Getting involved in their treatment up at St Mungo's, for one thing. I heard you went there every single day following Kieran's attack. Spent all your time there up until Christmas hols, hounding the Healers and nurses and mediwizards for some kind of answer. And then this rendezvous that I hear you're setting up with Tilly Longbottom all of a sudden. The two bitter rivals made best friends as they search for a cure. It's practically poetic if you really stop to think about it."

"That's not exactly what's going on between us—"

"Getting involved isn't exactly the smartest decision you could be making here. I mean, I—don't you think it's kind of suspicious that only people _our_ age are being attacked? No little children, no adults, no elderly people. Just people less than ten years out of school. Isn't that the least bit strange to you?"

Roxy nodded; it had occurred to her already how odd it was the every single one of the victims was between seventeen and twenty-five years of age. It was the only thing that could definitively connect all four—no, five now—victims.

And perhaps that made sense; if you were going to possess and attack people, why _not_ go for one of the few age groups that hardly anyone else cared about? The young adults, too old to draw the 'oh no' factor of children, but just anti-establishment and bitter enough to be readily accused by adults of merely 'acting out' or 'poorly reacting to the stress of the real world'.

But the question that still remained was _who_ or _what_ was taking over the bodies of these youths and causing them to use the same dark spell on themselves time after time?

Could this force be the same dark creature that Tilly had spoken of and that James had talked about, or was there more than one agent of some unexplained, unearthly, all-consuming _monster_ just outside of the fragile walls of the bubble that separated the world of the living from whatever shadowy realm the dead walked in?

Roxy hoped it was just the one—a single entity was always far easier to take down compared to an entire army of unknown enemies.

"I'm not that important, Lorcan. Nobody's going to come after me just because I get more involved than may be considered healthy. I'll be fine." Roxy smiled at him though she couldn't quite make herself believe her own words.

Lorcan shook his head, staring at her. Roxy had not noticed until now, but his eyes were blank—devoid of all emotion.

Devoid of all humanity.

He pulled out his wand and time felt like it was slowing down, falling to a mere crawl as Roxy shrieked; she reached out to tear Lorcan's wand from his hand even as he formed the spell on his lips. She had noticed the change in him during their conversation, too busy focusing on his words to notice that what made up Lorcan was quickly fading, replaced by something far more sinister.

She would not let him be hurt. Roxy would not lose another friend.

She snatched the wand from Lorcan's hand before he could finish the curse, tackling the taller male to the ground, where he tried to use his size to his advantage; but Roxy was a Weasley and she knew how to fight against people larger than herself. She rolled over onto her stomach, arms tucked underneath her chest so that Lorcan couldn't get to his wand. He grabbed at her hair, snarling and hissing like a wild animal as he tried to reclaim his property, but Roxy ignored the vicious blows to her back.

"Help!" she shrieked, hoping someone in the next room over would come to her aid. It would be just her luck if the entire family was outside right now, enjoying the snow, with no one around to come to her aid. "Somebody please help! I need help! I'm being attacked, help me!"

The weight of Lorcan's frame was removed suddenly and she lifted her head weakly to see that he had been thrown across the kitchen, his head smashing into the wall opposite Roxy. He groaned, faint but still a groan, though Lorcan made no move to get up, clearly still dizzy from the impact.

Roxy looked around, expecting to see Uncle Bill or Teddy standing behind her, waiting for a thank-you, but there was no one else. Except for Roxy and Lorcan, the Weasley kitchen was mysteriously devoid of life. Had Lorcan, for some reason, tossed himself or—

"Hello Roxanne Weasley," said James Potter the first, appearing above her; his face flickered a few times before settling. He gave her a friendly smile and offered out his hand to help Roxy stand up.

"H-how'd you get here?" she stammered, staring up at the dead man in bewilderment. "How'd you t-throw Lorcan like that?"

He winked at her as Lorcan let out another groan. "You asked for help, Roxanne. I was only coming to your assistance—or would you rather that I reset everything and bring Mr Scamander back over here to finish the job?"

"No—no! Of course not, but…when I yelled for help, I was expecting someone more, y'know, alive to come to my aid—not that I don't appreciate you pulling him off of me, but where is everyone? Vic only walked out of the room a few minute ago; she couldn't have gone too far."

"Ah. Yes, about that." James rubbed his chin thoughtfully, looking in the direction of the sitting room, which was conspicuously silent. "In order to pull Mr Scamander off of you—in order to drive out the creature that was lurking inside of him—I had to freeze the situation long enough to intervene."

"Freeze the situation?" she echoed in a tone that conveyed disbelief. "As in, like, stopping time? Is that—is that what you mean?"

"Er, well, yes, that's what I did, when you simplify things quite a bit. It's another 'perk' of being dead, I suppose you could say, the manipulation of time and perception, like your friend Miss Longbottom—oh, I'm afraid I accidentally did quite a number on her, erasing everyone's memory of my being there, but it was necessary to avoid the uncomfortable question of where the crazy guy claiming he was a ghost had run off to."

"And the sign on my dad's old room from back in July? Was that also because of you?"

"Ah, no." James ran his hands through his hair, giving her a somewhat sheepish look. "That was, in fact, your brother trying to get your attention. He was more than a bit upset when you ran off without figuring it out, but I suppose you can be forgiven for not jumping to the conclusion that your deceased brother was messing with reality just so you would notice him. He's been following you around for a while now, watching you at your house and around the shop, going with you to St Mungo's and such."

Roxy rolled her eyes though she couldn't keep a small smile from curling her lips upwards. That all certainly sounded like her brother Freddie the genius, assuming that she would easily be able to decipher his messages. Especially considering that, back in July, as far as Roxy was concerned, ghosts were a relic of the past—in more ways than one. It would be a bit ludicrous to expect her to immediately pick up on such a message.

"You know, for a guy who was really smart when he was alive, my brother can be a massive idiot sometimes," she said; Lorcan announced his continued conscience with another loud groan. "So once you, uh, what is it, 'unfreeze' time, then—"

"Then your family will come running in here to ask why you were yelling, and probably to ask why Mr Scamander is slumped against the wall and making those dreadful noises that are not at all unlike my wife's old cat."

"Your wife—right, Lily Potter. The original Lily Potter, the greatest witch of her age, mother to the saviour of the wizarding world as well as my uncle. So, wait," Roxy stopped to think about what that meant. "Wouldn't that make you and me, like, related as well?"

"Hm…" James ran his hands through his hair for the second time. "Barely, I think, maybe your great-uncle by marriage or something along those lines, though I know we're also related through the Black family if I'm not mistaken about my Pureblood history." He shrugged. "Most Purebloods are connected in more way than one—it was, after all, the only way to keep the bloodline 'pure' as it were."

"Alright, Great-Uncle James," Roxy replied, laughing when he shot her an indignant look. It was, admittedly, very weird to be talking to a man who physically appeared to only be two years older than she, yet refer to him as 'great-uncle'. It was a bit like talking to his successor, James Potter the second.

"And with that, I truly must be heading out before anyone else makes rude comments about my age. I happen to think I look quite youthful for a sixty-eight year old man." He winked at her, and then, as quietly and suddenly as he'd come, James was gone once more, leaving Roxy—who was still clutching Lorcan's wand tightly in her gasp—and a wounded Lorcan, who blearily waved a hand in her direction when Roxy asked if he was feeling okay.

She wasn't entirely certain how to interpret that.

Exactly as James had promised, though, those who had been chatting in the sitting room came rushing in all at once to ask if she was okay, their expressions turning to that of confusion when they took in the sight of Roxy gripping Lorcan's wand and Lorcan himself sprawled across the floor on the other side of the room.

"Roxy?" Uncle Bill asked, looking at her with shock and a slight amount of admiration. "What happened in here? Are you two alright?"

She nodded and opened her mouth to explain how Lorcan had come to be thrown across the room—an explanation free of visits from James Potter or any mention of demons or whatever they were, controlling Lorcan's mind.

Her family wasn't ready for the whole truth.

Not yet anyway.


	32. Musings of a kindly future

"Do you honestly expect them to just let in two kids because we asked them to do so _nicely_?" Roxy demanded, propping her elbows up on the table and leaning forward in order to appear more intimidating.

"Two?!" Jo cried just as Tilly, sounding as scandalised as she possibly could, squeaked "Kids?!"

Roxy rolled her eyes at the both of them; just keeping Tilly and Jo from starting a fight in the middle of Merlin's Cafe. She didn't have the patience to deal with both females at the same time. It had only been twenty minutes and Roxy already wanted to scream and rip her hair out, but she was supposed to be the mature one in this situation for some reason, despite the fact that, out of the three girls, Roxy was typically the _least_ mature of all.

( _Oh how quickly the world was already changing_ , she thought to herself sarcastically, holding back a smile.)

"Jo, it was never even officially decided that you'd be coming with us. After all, we _are_ supposed to be sneaking into the archives of the Department of Mysteries—one of the most well-hidden places in Wizarding England, might I add—and the fewer people we have involved in our plan, the less likely we are to be caught."

Tilly stuck her tongue out at Jo (rather immature of her, since Tilly was usually the first one to go off on a rant about having manners and respect)

"And you, Tilly—" It was Jo's turn to smirk at Roxy's continued irritation and raise an eyebrow at Tilly, daring her to say anything. "—you _could_ have told me that the archives were in the Department of Mysteries so I would have at least some idea of what to expect. Like, seriously, do you k _now_ why they call it the Department of Mysteries and not the Department of Come On In and Have a Look Around? They're not going to let two, or three—" Jo shut her mouth with an audible click of the jaw, placated. "—teenage girls just stroll in with no problem. It doesn't matter if you _are_ Tilly Longbottom or if _I'm_ Roxanne Weasley, if we actually do try to just waltz our way in without the proper clearance, they'll arrest us faster than you can say Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, and then we'll _all_ be screwed. Your parents probably won't be too fond of having to bail you out."

Tilly shook her head, waving a hand carelessly to express that she wasn't particularly bothered. "No, no, I have a plan for all of this. Honestly, what do you think I am, some reckless Gryffindor that rushes into stuff without thinking about every possible outcome ahead of time?" She laughed. "Your cousin works as an Unspeakable. She can sneak us into the archives since she, y'know, belongs there."

It was Roxy's turn to laugh, spluttering and coughing through her tea. "Are you _joshing_ me? Are you bloody fucking joking?" she finally managed to choke out. Tilly frowned, crossing her arms over her chest and tilted her chin downwards. "Fucking hell, you _aren't_ kidding, are you? Do you really want to go ask my cousin, _Molly goddamn Weasley_ , the most intense, follow-the-rules person that I have ever known, right after her father? You want to—to go ask her to help us do something not just majorly against the rules, but incredibly illegal?! Do you honestly think she'd help us sneak into the Ministry—especially at the risk to her own job?" Tilly nodded. "Molly loves her job more than anything, are you bloody serious? And you want to ask her? _Really_?"

"Not quite." Tilly gave her a sickly sweet smile, the hint of a spark lighting in her eyes. "I want _you_ to ask her, Roxy. After all, she's your cousin. If anyone of us is going to get her to help us commit a crime, it'll be her own cousin that will elicit the most sympathy."

That stopped Roxy's laughter quickly.

* * *

She wasn't going to do it, Roxy decided in the middle of their meal. She wasn't going to ask her cousin to assist in something so illegal, not if it meant that Molly might be fired and expunged from the Ministry in disgrace. If they were going to break into the archives, then the three girls would have to do it by themselves, without dragging any family members into the plan.

Roxy did not particularly want to end up in Azkaban for the likes of Tilly Longbottom, but even worse was the idea of dragging her innocent cousin into the mix, a move that would be considered low even by most Slytherins.

"We're doing it without Molly," she announced, pushing her plate aside; Roxy's stomach was beginning to hurt, though not entirely because of the quality of the food she'd just finished eating, which was a little poorer than what you could get at The Leaky Cauldron. "We're doing it without her or we're not doing it at all. We can figure out some other way of getting into the archives that _doesn't_ risk everything my cousin has spent the past nine years working towards."

Tilly looked Roxy up and down, clearly thinking over Roxy's declaration, before she, too, shoved away her half-finished plate of food. "You Weasleys really do stick up for each other no matter what, huh? All for one and one for all, all of that huzzah?"

"She's my family. I won't involve her in anything dangerous or illegal."

"Very well." Tilly sighed, but she looked agreeable enough. "I'll find someone else who works in the Department of Mysteries, or maybe I can find some old records of the archives, back before they hid everything from the general public. _Someone_ had to build that place—there have to be permits and construction plans and a layout of the rooms, maybe a map to help new recruits find their way around without getting horribly lost."

"Are you fucking stupid or just really naïve?" Tilly turned in her seat to glare at Jo, who stared determinedly right back at the Ravenclaw. Both girls were refusing to back down. "It's called the Department of _Mysteries_ for a reason, you bloody half-wit. They're supposed to be a _mystery_. As in, a secret? As in, there are no records or maps of the place except _maybe_ in the recesses of the archives, which we would need a map to reach in the first place. Besides that, any other copies that might have existed outside of the department itself at some point were probably burnt to a crisp several centuries ago. They've never been very welcoming of outsiders coming into even the antechamber, let alone the rooms where they keep all of their most well-hidden secrets."

Roxy had to grab the collar of Tilly's shirt to keep her from reaching across the table to slap Jo.

The other Slytherin girl had her wand out in a flash, pointed at Tilly, only to moments later have a wand pointed in _her_ face, held upwards by a shaking Tilly.  
Roxy groaned, wondering how they were supposed to get through a (no doubt very stressful) break-in if they couldn't even survive an entire meal without breaking into insults and wands ready for a duel.

" _Expelliarmus_!" she called out, pulling out her own wand, and both of the other girls' wands were sent flying behind their backs. " _Accio wands_ ," Roxy added and held out her hand for the Summoned objects, ignoring Tilly and Jo's protests. "Can we _not_ act like children, please? I'm supposedly less mature than either of you, yet I'm the only one here not prepared to engage in a duel like we're a bunch of self-inflated first years. Not mention that this is a public eating space."

There were, in fact, people staring at them, whispering and pointing with curiosity in the direction of their table.

Jo and Tilly exchanged embarrassed looks and mumbled apologies to Roxy, who merely rolled her eyes in response to their ridiculous behaviour, biting the skin of her hands with her nails to keep from groaning as loudly as she could.

"So we're asking someone else, or we're finding some other way of getting into the archives on our own, alright?" she asked them both sternly; they nodded, cowed into total silence by the steely look in her eyes. "Then this is the end of the conversation, I should think before someone actually _does_ get killed by a stupid duel. Tilly, write to me if you think of some way to get into the archives. Jo, you and I are going to visit Leanne tomorrow, and there's no getting out of it, do you understand?" She stood up, tossing their wands across the table and dropping coins to pay for her meal, letting the skitter and roll away. "Have a nice day."

Roxy left the café, doing her best not to trip on the steps outside, which would completely ruin her dramatic departure.

She groaned quietly to herself, stretching her fingers, which had balled into tights fists when she forced herself to stay calm rather than leaping across the table to strangle both Tilly and Jo right there regardless of witnesses.

Couldn't they just grow up and realise how stupid a petty fight that had started during their school days was, in the grand scheme of things? If some dark force was coming to kill them all and destroy the world, then did it really matter that Tilly Longbottom was a bitch and Roxy had retaliated for her shitty behaviour throughout their days of Hogwarts?

Hands now stuffed into the pockets of her robes, Roxy slowly made her way back to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes; she did not take the direct route, though, wanting to wander around for a while despite the cold that bit at her nose and cheeks. She didn't want to go home just yet.

Roxy's thoughts drifted to Tolkien, who had not responded to any of the messages she'd sent him since the New Year's party at Mia's flat. Roxy had not been quite sure where the older male lived, but Lily gave her the address he was last located at without asking too many questions or giving her too many bewildered looks, which was decent of her.

He had not said anything or written a message of any kind back to Roxy, not even a refusal or a request for her to kindly bugger off. Growing desperate, Roxy had even stopped by the address given to her, and though the doorstep was clear of all letters and the window into the kitchen was wide open, the lights were off, and unwashed pots and weeks' old food wrappers littered the counters from what she could see when she leaned inside to check.

There was no sign of life from Tolkien's flat and certainly no way of confirming that he hadn't just taken off without bothering to tell anyone.

Perhaps he didn't _want_ to be found, though, with all of the questions that Roxy had, she wasn't sure it was possible to care about what Tolkien wanted.

But other than Tolkien and Tilly—with whom Roxy was _definitely_ done for the day and maybe the entirety of tomorrow as well—who else did she know of that had encountered James Potter or some other, unnamed ghost?

There was Lucy—who was currently unconscious and possibly still lying on her deathbed at St Mungo's.

Faith—but she was a mere five year old and probably didn't have a clear understanding of what she'd seen. After all, how many children that young even comprehended death?

Lily—though she didn't believe in ghosts, and insisted that no dark force had ever visited her nor anyone else she knew.

Roxy could think of no one else of whom she could be certain that knew about the ghosts, _believed_ in their continued existence, and was currently available to talk about the subject. This meant that she was alone for now unless she could find someone else, someone to whom the truth had been revealed already and who wasn't being a stubborn bastard about it like Roxy had been ever since June.

That thought reminded her of the picture of Freddie that had moved on its own on the day of graduation; Roxy _knew_ , even then, that she'd tucked it inside her trunk, but allowed herself to be convinced that she was just imagining things, recalling events that had not truly happened, all in order to deny an experience that _had_ occurred so that she could continue complying with the rules thrust upon her by a society that insisted that such an occurrence could not and _did not_ happen to anyone, ever.

But what were you supposed to do when the world was wrong? Who were you supposed to turn to when everything you've known for nineteen years turns out to be completely false?

She could not be like Lucy, who's inability to care what others thought of her gave Lucy the power to freely speak her mind without worrying that anyone else would think she was mad. Roxy was not—and never would be, no doubt—so bold to do such a thing, but she also knew that she couldn't keep this information secret for too much longer. There was simply far too many unanswered questions about the future to leave the matter in the hands of someone like her.

Roxy wondered what her life would be like a year from now—or even six months from now. What would she know? What enemies would she befriend, or which friends would she no longer talk to? Would Lucy ever recover enough that she could help Roxy figure all of this out?

And wasn't that just the oddest outcome of them all, that her cuckoo bird of a cousin was now the one person Roxy felt she could rely on to truly explain what was happening. Until—well, until right now, to be honest, Lucy had just been her kind-hearted, if a little naive, older cousin. Things were different now and one of the first things Roxy had to ask herself was how many times she would be telling herself that in the upcoming weeks and months.

She sighed and stopped walking, looking around for a familiar sight in the hopes that she had not wandered off into Knockturn Alley during her musings, but luckily the joke shop was right in front of her, filled with Hogwarts students spending their last day and what remained of their pocket money on sweets and pranking items; tomorrow morning, they would all be gone again until July and the part-time employees would be released, left to apply for work in other places, though they were always encouraged to come back during the summer time if they still needed a job.

Roxy thought about how differently her life had been six months ago, before all the secrets and ghostly visitors. Back when she was dating Kieran and hated Tilly and didn't even know that Aniya and Desmond existed. Back before any of the part-time employees were hired, back before working at Henrik's, back before Lucy's admittance to St Mungo's, back before being nineteen. Things had been easier then and they made a lot more sense just six months ago.

 _But you didn't know the truth six months ago, either,_ said the ever observant voice in her head, the one that Roxy usually did her best to ignore. _Isn't it better to know the truth and suffer the consequences rather than continuing to live in blissful ignorance for the rest of your life, just like everyone else around you who refuses to open their eyes?_

Roxy couldn't come up with a good counter to that (what a damn joke she was! losing arguments to her own self-conscious) and instead chose to stuff her hands into her pockets and continued to hope that someone would soon show up to give her all of the answers to life. Roxy was certainly not like a Ravenclaw, who would probably _love_ to go digging through old papers and uncover hidden secrets. Nor was she very much like a Gryffindor, who would probably enjoy doing the same thing purely for the sake of adventure.

No, Roxy just wanted all of this information to be handed to her without the threat of danger.

Or better yet, couldn't she just have a normal life that was devoid of any and all ancient secrets, prophecies, or hidden agendas to destroy the world and life as she knew it?

No—of course not. She was a _Weasley_ , after all, and that meant that anything weird that _could_ happen to her _would_ happen to her.

* * *

As if to add insult to injury, Mum handed Roxy a letter the moment that she trudged inside; Roxy hadn't even been allowed the chance to take off her cold and wet clothes before Mum shoved a crumpled envelope into Roxy's hands.

"This came for you while you were out with Jo," her mum said (only _mostly_ redundantly, Roxy mentally muttered). She had not been told about Roxy's 'meeting' with Tilly since it had been determined that such information would only lead to a lengthy interrogation from Roxy's mother.

Roxy slid her thumb underneath the seal, more annoyed than curious since the outside was left blank and devoid of any address or even the name of the sender—it was just one more anonymous warning from someone too afraid to show her their face.

"Thanks, Mum," she replied in a distracted tone, heading straight towards her room. Was this just going to be another one of those dumb letters that vaguely hinted at greater forces at work but did absolutely nothing in the way of offering real information or assistance? Or was it just more stupid threats to attempt to scare her into dropping her investigation?

(Survey said—yes! And, for all the points, she was right on both accounts. How exciting.)

 _Miss Weasley,_

 _You continue to ignore our warning and continue to ignore our advice. We send you helpers and you spit in our face time after time. There will soon come a day when such insolence will not be stood for. Listen to our warnings or pay the consequences. Your cousins may not be the last Weasley to fall victim to the same fate, and it will concern you that St Mungo's might not have enough beds for them all. Abandon your search—abandon your hunt—and we will leave you alone. To do anything else is in direct violation of our instructions, and you will suffer greatly for your behaviour, should you reject what you have been told._

Roxy's hands shook as she kicked her bedroom door shut. It gave off a satisfying bang, snapping shut and locking itself when she waved her wand angrily at the door. With a trembling frame, Roxy set herself down on her mattress, the letter crumpling between her fingers as she fought to keep from screaming.

They were threatening her—threatening her family, her friends, and she didn't even know who ' _they_ ' fucking were!

Her breath came out in a ragged gasp; Roxy flung the letter away from her, but it only floated peacefully down to the floor. She didn't want to be gentle, to be quiet, at that moment, not when strangers were attempting to blackmail her into doing what they said at the expense of her own family's life.

It was with this angry logic—or rather, lack thereof—that Roxy grabbed the lamp off of her end table and smashed it against the wall, barely even noticing the shattered glass that flung itself back against her face, leaving a shallow cut on Roxy's cheek. The pain was numbed by pent up rage and was nowhere near enough to still Roxy or even slow her down. She kicked at her bookcase, sending books tumbling to the floor. Old stuffed animals were tossed against the walls, knocking off posters and pictures. Her school trunk—untouched since June—was upended, making a crashing noise, quickly followed by the shattering of glass as the lid popped open and all of her belongings fell out, scattering onto the floor.

Her brother's picture laid on the ground, the glass frame smashes and the small image of Freddie inside fled from sight, running off to somewhere where no one would be able to toss him around in a fit of rage.

Roxy froze, staring down at the trashed frame; all of the anger and frustration left her just as quickly as it had come over her.

She bent down to carefully pick it up, repairing the broken frame with another wave of her wand after Roxy found it sitting inside of her old owl cage where she'd tossed it during her tantrum. Roxy gently ran her fingers over the picture, remembering when she had snapped a photograph of him on her first day of Hogwarts.

Freddie had come with Mum and Dad to see her off; he ruffled Roxy's hair and told her that he was so proud of her for finally making to Hogwarts like there was ever a chance of her _not_ going after all of those Weasley cousins. He reminded her that all of her older family members still in school would look after Roxy since he was no longer able to—"though that doesn't mean I would ever think of discouraging you from following in my footsteps as the greatest prankster in your year, just to follow the Weasley tradition."

Roxy had begged her brother for one last picture of him before she left, just in case, she started to forget his face and Freddie agreed with a laugh.

Later, Rose and Scorpius—fifth years at the time—helped her dip the picture in the potion that granted its occupant movement, and it was practically like having a silent Freddie with her all of the time in her dorm.

(Just two years later, Freddie was dead and Roxy's whole world was turned on its head.)

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the eighteen year old Freddie in the picture, stroking the side of the frame, and sighed. "I didn't mean to hurt you, I just got mad. I—I shouldn't have thrown your picture. I shouldn't have gotten mad like that."

it was weird to think that Roxy was now older than the boy who peeked in at her from the side of his portrait. In September, she would be older than the actual Freddie ever lived to see.

He'd been two months from his twentieth birthday when Freddie decided to try out for Puddlemere United. James was meant to go as well, but he'd gotten in trouble with his mum and was forced to wait until the second day of try-outs before he could join the rest of the new recruits.

Perhaps if James had been there, Freddie wouldn't have joked around about how slippery everything was because of the heavy rain that fell all morning. Maybe Freddie wouldn't have missed the frantic shouting from the Beater, who had accidentally sent a Bludger in Freddie's direction. It was possible that he wouldn't have fallen sixty metres from his broom to the unforgiving ground so far below, where no amount of Healers and potions would ever save him.

Roxy held the picture against her chest, closing her eyes to keep back the tears that threatened to fall down her cheeks. She'd spent so long restraining herself, keeping the memories of Freddie's death locked away in the recesses of her mind.

But no longer, Roxy told herself. If she was going to look into the truth about ghosts, Roxy was going to have to face what happened to her brother—what had happened to her father. She would have to admit, finally, that the past had happened, but still keep it from controlling her.

After all, if it was the end of the world coming soon, Roxy didn't have time to fly into fits of rage any time someone threatened her. Nor did she have time to become an emotional mess at every mention of Freddie.

When preparing for a possible battle, there was simply just no time for allowing emotions to take over, and Roxy was too strong, too smart, too determined to let emotions rule her life.


	33. Stand tall in the face of danger

It took Tilly thirteen days to find someone willing to help them into the Department of Mysteries _and_ to formulate a plan of entry and escape that both Roxy and Jo felt was feasible. Tilly's inside source didn't have the archived burned into his memory like she thought was possible—because, as it turned out, apparently no map of the place existed anywhere in the Ministry, or so he'd been told—but the guy still claimed that he knew how to get around well enough to make sure that they didn't get lost or captured by Unspeakables.

Supposedly he did, at least. It was what he'd told Tilly and what she had in turn sworn to Roxy and Jo when explaining _why_ they had to go this guy's house in the middle of the day and meet up with him to talk over things.

Looking their 'inside source' up and down, though, Roxy was not entirely convinced that _this_ man, above anyone else, was the one to be trusted with directions on how to get even a lavatory, let alone getting into a top secret government facility that was cut off from everyone and everything else.

His name was Brennan Klein, a Hufflepuff who had graduated in the same year as Victoire. He was short, for a male, with mousy, greasy brown hair and mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue, both watery and very twitchy. Brennan's nose kept running and his speech was punctuated by noisy sniffling. He pulled out a much-abused handkerchief and blew his nose before diving straight back into his explanation.

They were at his house—or rather, they were at his _mum's_ house, because Brennan still lived at home, something he'd unabashedly informed the three girls upon first opening the door, almost like it was something to be proud of.

"These are friends from work," he told his mother before she could even open her mouth to ask. He must have gotten that sort of question about any girl he brought home though Roxy couldn't imagine Brennan was the sort to be bringing many people—male _or_ female—into the house. "I'm not dating any of them and I'm not interested, either, so don't try anything, you interfering old gnat. It won't work."

Mrs Klein frowned but headed back into the kitchen to prepare a tray of tea and biscuits for them, the three girls thanked Mrs Klein while Brennan sneezed violently into his handkerchief and waved her of. Overall, he didn't strike Roxy as the kind of person she wanted to work with, not to mention that he didn't strike her as being someone she could trust to keep to himself a very dangerous secret that could get them all into serious legal trouble if anything were to go wrong.

That didn't even account for if they were to be injured, or worse, _die_ while on their escapade.

"So how old are you two?" Brennan asked, looking towards Jo and Roxy. "Matilda here told me she was only eighteen. A little bit young to be playing the spy and breaking into the Ministry if you ask me." He emphasised this declaration by having a short coughing fit into his handkerchief before rubbing it across his red nose.

"Er, I'm nineteen," said Roxy, looking at him in distaste.

"And I'm _going_ to be nineteen soon enough," Jo added, also staring at Brennan as though he were some unfortunate beetle that she'd found on the street and was considering crushing beneath her heel.

Brennan sighed and heaved himself up onto his feet, pacing back and forth a few times with his hands behind his back like he was that muggle detective from Rose's novels that she'd tried to get the younger cousins into.

He seemed deep in thought, his brow furrowed, his shoulders pulled tightly inwards, and such intensity was written across his features. Finally, Brennan sat down once more, letting out a heavy sigh.

Roxy couldn't understand how someone so miserably pathetic could be the same age as her cousin Victoire. Though both twenty-eight, Vic was very adult-like, whereas Brennan struck Roxy as one of those guys whose best days were long gone and he was just going to float through life for the next eighty years with no real purpose in life.

Vic and Brennan were two entirely different creatures; it would be like trying to compare sunshine to pond scum.

(Was it obvious that she didn't much care for the likes of Brennan Klein?)

"You'd think it would be smart to wait until you're _at least_ twenty to start breaking into government facilities," Brennan finally said, his mouth splitting into an awkwardly wide grin that revealed his off-coloured teeth. He sniffled once more. "I guess your generation is a little more zealous than mine about committing federal crimes. _C'est vie,_ though, am I right?" He chuckled weakly.

Brennan was smarmy, cocky, and full of himself, even though he wasn't much to look at, as though he hoped that by pretending to be better than he really was, people would maybe start to believe his façade.

Roxy leant forward, all business, and looked him directly in the eyes, staring down the older male. It was similar to the same game tha they used to play in the Slytherin common room, holding another person's gaze until they couldn't stand it any more and forced themselves to look away or _you_ were the ones who was revealed to be weak and gave in.

Brennan finally gulped, sneezed, and shifted his gaze towards the floor, blushing slightly. Roxy smirked at him, celebrating her small victory in silence.

"So can you tell them what it is you told me about being able to get the three of us into the Department of Mysteries and then into the archives and back out?" Tilly smiled at Brennan sweetly, the innocent flower to Roxy's madly buzzing bee.

Brennan nodded, perking up slightly though he still avoided Roxy's gaze as he picked up his speech once again."So I've worked for the Department of Mysteries for the past eight years, okay? And I don't know where _everything_ is—I don't think anyone actually does, even the old guys who swear they have the whole place memorised—but you're in luck, because the area I've been assigned to work in is the archives, where they store any and all information pertaining to the Ministry and the Wizarding World as a whole. Every old law that gets passed—it goes to the archives. Salaries paid annually for every member of staff—it goes to the archives. Write-ups of scandals concerning married Heads of various departments with their very young secretaries—it _also_ goes in the archives, of course."

He leant back in his chair, that smarmy look back on his face. Roxy wanted to slap him and take away that obnoxious expression, but she forced herself to sit still, knowing that acting out would only make Brennan refuse to help them out.

"What, you know a bunch of stuff about pervy old men and that's somehow going to help us?" retorted Jo, eyes flashing with frustration, expressing out loud the thoughts in Roxy's head.

Tilly Longbottom was completely useless, Roxy though to herself. They were talking to a self-inflated, conceited prick who probably couldn't actually help them in the slightest and was just trying to show off to make himself look better to Tilly.

(He probably was her sort anyway—smarmy and a kiss-up.)

"Tilly, this guy doesn't know anything at all," said Roxy. This was just so typical of Tilly—completely useless and a massive waste of absolutely everyone's time, especially Roxy's.

"Okay, so yeah, I agree with Roxy on this. Knowing what's _in_ the archives isn't the same thing as getting us there. Hell, I could probably guess that that's the sort of creepy information that the Ministry keeps on people and I just work for the Floo network.' Jo, squished into a chair, was also looking up at Brennan like she couldn't quite believe he was real.

Brennan sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and shook his head. "Oh, ye of little faith. Tilly, where did you find these people? They question everything, they judge based on a single glance, and most troubling, they're _Slytherins_."

"What's wrong with that?" Roxy snapped, scowling at him. "Didn't you just accuse _us_ of being too judgemental in the exact same breath?"

"Well, I know Slytherins, snakey little buggers that you sort are. Like to use a guy and dump him the second he stops serving your purpose. For all I know, if things turn sour, you might run off and leave me all by myself to get caught and punished."

"Hypocrite," Jo grumbled, but Roxy placed a hand on her knee, shaking her head.

"We won't do that," explained Roxy. " _Most_ Slytherins wouldn't do that. We aren't terrible people, we wouldn't just abandon you to take the fall."

"Mm." Brennan pursed his lips, slipping his wand out of his pocket. "Very well then, I'm going to trust that you two snakes are more honourable than the ones I've met in my lifetime and hold you to your word. But if you _do_ cross me at any point, believe this when I say that I will sell you out just as quickly as you sold me."

"And the same to you, sir."

He nodded. " _Accio_ parchment," he said, directing is wand towards a stack of papers behind him. They floated over, dropping onto the table that separated Brennan from where the girls were sitting. The papers landed with a very solid _thump_. It was a massively thick stack, so tall that Roxy had to lean to the side just to see Brennan smirking down at them. "Let's start by going over the plan, shall we? Now, I've mapped out about thirty-one different ways of doing this. Let's see, number one is that we..."

Roxy groaned internally, wondering what exactly, it was that she'd gotten herself into.

* * *

Roxy stood just outside of the elevator, watching people come and go. A few recognised her as Ange Weasley's kid and stopped to say hello, but Roxy just shook them off by explaining that she was waiting for her cousin to get out from work since they had a dinner date tonight.

Roxy was actually fairly certain that Molly wasn't even working today' she'd spent a lot of time at St Mungo's recently.

In fact, for the first time since she started working at the Ministry, Molly had taken a sick leave to spend time with her sister, because according to the Healers, Lucy wasn't getting any better and she might not live to see the end of February.

But they'd said the exact same thing about January, and here it was, the very last day of the month and Lucy was still alive, if only just barely.

Across the hallway, she saw Jo walking back and forth slowly, seemingly consumed by the pamphlet in her hands, though in reality, she was waiting for the same signal that Roxy was looking for—Brennan was supposed to come out after everyone else and pretend like he would lock the door, only to let Roxy, Tilly, and Jo into the antechamber and lead them towards the archives.

Somewhere nearby, just out of sight, Tilly was distracting the Head of the DoM, Madam Entwhistle—who, along with her husband, was friends with Uncle Harry, though it seemed like most people were; probably Tilly was prattling on about how heroic Madam Entwhistle and her husband were in the Battle of Hogwarts thirty years ago, buttering the middle-aged woman up so that she wouldn't suspected what was going on only one hallway down from where she stood.

DoM employees, first only one or two trickling out at a time and then an absolute stream of people, departed from their place of work, some chatting to each other as they walked, or reading over papers; many were silent and sullen, looking around with a shifty, distrusting expression on their face. Every now and then, someone would wave at Roxy and she would nod politely back, but for the most part, she was ignored, just a bit of scenery that hardly anyone noticed.

Eventually, the stream returned to a trickle and finally stopped altogether, leaving Roxy still leaning against the wall by herself.

Down the hall, Jo tucked her 'reading material' into her pocket and made her way over to Roxy, taking her time to walk in order to give off the appearance that she was just going for a stroll instead of preparing to break into a heavily guarded government facility.

"Weasley," she said in her most adult-like voice, stopping directly in front of Roxy.

"Bartley. Nice to see you," Roxy replied in the same tone, barely able to hold back a smirk.

"The same to you. How are the kids?"

"Oh, they've been wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Little Matty showed his first signs of magic only last week."

"How lovely."

They giggled, the illusion of being two boring co-workers breaking as they could not keep back their snickers any longer. There was just an urge to crack jokes to relieve the tension in the air that seemed to coat everything around them, practically clogging Roxy's throat. She was nervous— _they_ were nervous—and being childish was a good way to relax, to keep form letting the anxiety get to them before the operation could even begin.

(Plus, it was just plain fun to make fun of people and have a laugh.)

"How much longer do you think it'll be?" Jo asked, craning her neck to look past Roxy's shoulder. "Waiting makes me nervous. _Brennan_ makes me nervous, too, if I'm being honest. They way it feels like he's always staring at me, judging every little thing I say or do, not to mention how many times he's brought up that he doesn't trust us. It makes me feel like—like...well, it makes me feel like he might tell someone about this, or turn us in, and that really scares me."

Roxy nodded in agreement; in the last week and a half, spending so many hours with Tilly and Brennan to pour over plans, re-working and adjusting what they were going to do—not once had Roxy felt like her input was being respected or even listened to.

Brennan was too busy trying to take over everything and be in charge of an operation that he technically wasn't supposed to even be involved in.

Just then, the door to the antechamber opened and Brennan himself—like the unwanted prodigal son that he was—stuck his head out to look at them, very much resembling a chicken with its head on the chopping block, what with his bulging eyes and strip of wobbling throat. (It was only because this was meant to be a _very serious_ situation that Roxy did not burst into laughter right there.)

He beckoned for them to come inside, frowning slightly when Tilly came rushing up a few seconds later, her cheeks pink and her chest rising and falling quickly as she tried to retain the air in her lungs.

"Sorry, Madam Entwhistle likes to talk—apparently her daughter's having a kid and I just _had_ to hear all about it."

"Our time here is limited, Tilly. There's not even a second allotted to us for _chatting_ or anything silly like that. If someone figures out that we're here and boxes us in, then that's it, game over. And I don't know about you, but _I_ for one don't feel like going to Azkaban for the rest of my life." Brennan's eyes threatened to pop right out of his school, bulging so much that he struck Roxy as being less like a chicken and now much more toad-like. A vein was sticking out on his forehead, bright pink and throbbing.

"Hey, chill out, Brennan, no one's going to toss us in prison because I took an extra thirty seconds to talk to someone," Tilly shot back, holding her hands up defensively and gave Brennan an annoyed scowl. "Besides, if I started acting all antsy, like I had somewhere to go, Madam Entwhistle would have only asked where I was going and the whole process would have taken even longer for me to get over here because she'd want to chat about _that_ , too."

Brennan rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath about "this is why I hate the kids of Legendaries, they're always flaunting who they know" but rushed them inside the antechamber, looking up and down the hall furtively, checking to make sure that nobody was coming. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving them in darkness for a few brief seconds.

In the next moment, though—

Roxy looked around in amazement, taking in the sight before her. A dozen or more doors surrounded them on all sides, indistinguishable in any way. They were all the same dark shade, with no marks of any kind to tell what led where. Already, Roxy would have forgotten would door they came through had it not been right behind her. Blue flames hung by every door, giving the whole room an ominous glow.

"Everybody hold still," Brennan commanded them just before the room spun wildly around, moving so quickly that everything turned into a blur and Roxy could no longer tell what was above her and what was below. The flames blurred into one sold line streaked across the wall until Roxy thought the image was permanently burnt into her retinas. She would go to sleep seeing blue for the rest of her life.

There was only movement—and then stillness as the doors stopped spinning, again with no warning that they were going to stop.

Roxy grabbed at the wall in front of her to keep from falling over, mentally throwing curses in Brennan's general direction, as the older male stood calmly against the wall, observing as the girls stumbled and squawked with confusion.

Once her sense of balance was returned, Roxy looked behind her, but that door was exactly the same as all the others; there was not way of telling which door they had even come through, no discernible distinctions between them.

Were they trapped? Had this been part of Brennan's plan and now he would turn them in and—

The older male chuckled at their shocked expressions. "Anti-intruder methods. Confuses people so that they waste time wandering from door to door until security can come by and pick them up for breaking and entering. Now come on, before the spinning starts up again." Brennan waved his wand towards the centre of the room and a large golden ball of light appeared, floating half a metre off of the ground. " _Archives_ ," he told the light, which started spinning around as wildly as the room had moments before, growing faster and brighter with every revolution until it finally went soaring, flinging itself at Jo—who shrieked in surprise and ducked—before splattering against the door to her left.

"What the hell was that?" demanded Jo. "I nearly _died!_ "

"You're fine," replied Brennan casually, opening the glowing door with another flick from his wand. Come on, let's moving."

With that, the four headed inside and began making their way towards the archives. They were officially in the Department of Mysteries—from this point on, there was no turning back.

* * *

"This is the Hall of Prophecies," Brennan explained, waving his hand around at row after row of crystal balls, each containing a swirling steam of smoke—or was it a liquid? "Deeper in is the archives, which I happen to like a lot better. Less prophecies, more concrete history in the form of corporeal papers that I can actually hold in my hands and understand. We had a small small mishap thirty or so years ago, when a bunch of really old prophecies got destroyed; if you remember your history correct, that would be the 1996 Ministry battle. But we've recovered what we could and prophecies are always being made, a new one coming along every few days. We got our replacements for the smashed ones soon enough."

Glass orbs glimmered in the dim light, calling Roxy's name, beckoning her to walk closer and hear their secrets, to uncover long-forgotten glimpses into what could happen and what _will_ happen.

Roxy wondered if any of Trelawney's prophecies had ended up somewhere in this chamber, one small orb nestled amongst thousand upon thousand of others. What if that prophecy she'd made back in November was somewhere in here, waiting for its contents to come true, just as her prediction from 2005 had?

It was that thought that seemed to tug Roxy forward, making her feet shuffle in front of her without Roxy even noticing. She wandered a few metres away before the others had actually noticed. Her eyes glazed over and all that she could hear was the sound of a high, clear voice calling out to her, beckoning her towards its source somewhere further inside of the Hall of Prophecies . Roxy heard none of the confused protests from her companions. Her very being was being consumed by trying to find that angelic voice.

"Hey Roxy, where are you going? Hey, come back here, where are you going?"

"Wha the hell? Roxy! Hey, hey, Weasley, where the hell do you think you're wandering off to? You're going to get lost."

"That—that isn't the direction of the archives, Weasley, you're going in the entirely wrong direction, you know and...and...she can't hear a word we're saying, can she?"

Jo shook her head, watching as her friend continued to stumble past shelves of old prophecies. "It's like she's in a trance or something. She doesn't hear us or see us. Is that normal behaviour down here?" She turned to stare at Brennan.

"Not exactly…" he replied slowly, brow furrowing. "Not unless there's something in here that has her name on it, I mean."

"A prophecy about Roxy Weasley?"

"Yeah. I, uh, we're not sure why, but if someone comes in here and their name is tied to any of the prophecies—whether Seer or subject—then it's a bit like a siren's song, calling them closer. Prophecies seem to really enjoy being heard and I guess enchanting those for whom it was made about is one way of making sure that happens."

"You talk about prophecies abs though they have motivation and thought to interact with the world. They're just glass balls, Brennan," Tilly said, scoffing lightly.

Brennan shook his head, waving his hands at the other two girls to indicate that they should start following Roxy, who was almost too far away to see at that point. "They kind of do, though, Tilly. Like I said, we don; t know a whole lot about prophecies, but we've tested this theory enough times to basically confirm it. Every time we bring someone in here whose name is written somewhere in the Hall, they're forced to wander until they either find or—"

"Or die trying?"Jo finished, scowling at him when Brennan nodded, though he at least had the decency to look mildly sheepish. "Then pick up the pace, you idiots before we lose her in this stupid maze."

"But my schedule—" Brennan began to protest, but he fell silent when Tilly and Jo both gave him intense glares. "Fine, I guess we'll go follow after Weasley, even if she _is_ being a bit of a liability to the operation right now."

"You're the one that didn't bother to mention that we might be in danger of wandering the shelves for the rest of our lives just because some idiot made up a stupid prophecy with our name on it," snapped Jo, pushing Brennan along when he dragged his feet against the floor.

"I didn't think it would happen to any of _us_ ," Brennan whined.

"Well you should have planned that out then, shouldn't you?" Tilly replied darkly, and held up a finger when Brennan opened his mouth to protest. He shut his mouth and kept walking.

They followed after Roxy, heading deeper into the Hall of Prophecies, struggling to keep up with the girl who moved as though possessed, entirely unaware of anything except the lovely little voice that told her to _keep going, keep going._


	34. Whoever said prophecies were a good idea

Roxy would swear that it was Lucy who called to her, telling her to _turn left and left again, now right, you're almost there sweet Roxy, darling Roxy, just a little further and you've got it_ the voice being that of her incapacitated family member made sense to Roxy, never mind the little niggling doubt in the back of her head that said Lucy was far too busy lying in a bed at St Mungo's and was therefore not able to direct Roxy _anywhere_ , let alone through the shelves of the Hall of Prophecies, where Lucy was not and had never been and never would be.

(Amen.)

The thought made her laugh, though it did not sound like _Roxy's_ laugh, which made her stop for a moment and ponder how her own laugh could sound like that of a stranger's, but Lucy, sounding frustrated, demanded that Roxy _hurry up_ so she kept walking.

She followed her cousin's voice down the corridor and then another, her eyes catching glimpses from the edges of her line of vision of some gleaming gas or liquid or half-formed sold that caught an errant ray of dim light from the walls and feebly attempted to bounce it back.

 _Hurry up Roxy, go faster move faster, hurry to me or I'll disappear and I'll die and it will be all your fault so go faster, be faster, hurry, hurry, hurry will you? I'm lonely, so lonely, please come keep me company, won't you come talk to me, won't you help me, hurry, hurry, hurry, move, walk, be faster—faster! Faster, Roxy, fast—_

She had tripped over something and was sprawling against the harsh and cold stone floor, scraping the heels of her hand against the serrated rock.

Roxy let out a small, tremouring, trembling whimper, running a hand against her cheek only to feel the slick blood transfer from her face to her palm. She rubbed at the blood, feeling the sting of the open wound and searched her pockets for her wand in order to stem the bleeding.

If there was one thing she hated, it was blood.

A glance around her revealed that Roxy had tripped over a large pile of some sort of cloth or fabric that was laying beneath a tall stack of ancient prophecies. Wondering why someone would just leave a pile like that laying around for someone like herself to trip on, Roxy reached out to shove at the offending fabric only to realise that her detractor was far less innocent than it appeared to be at first glance.

A body, cold but still rotting, was what she had uncovered when turning the "fabric" around and it was only from the shock that Roxy did not start screaming her head off right there. Clearly the corpse had been here for quite some time, as the skin was taut and badly decayed, the stench of mummifying flesh filling her nose so that Roxy could barely stand to breathe, gagging and retching from the smell that emanated from the dead man—or what she thought was probably a man, though Roxy was not quite confident of the gender of the body and did not wish to move closer to investigate.

If she did die in here, how long would it be before someone found her cold, empty body? Days? Weeks? Possibly even months, years—or worst of all, that she would be destined to remain here in the dark for eternity.

A shaking hand covering her mouth, Roxy moved away from the dead man and stood up slowly on legs that felt like little more than jelly, quivering as hey struggled to hold up her weight.

What if she _did_ die in here and no one ever found out? What if Brennan and Tilly and Jo gave up looking for her, choosing instead to leave her behind to rot forever? That would mean that Mum would be left alone without any idea of what happened to her daughter, forced to spend the rest of her days in ignorance that Roxy had starved to death in this dumb place—and for what? For archives, that might not even be useful to her!

Roxy didn't want to die, not down in this dark pit all alone.

Why _was_ she even alone? Roxy looked around, unnerved by the absolute quiet save for the thudding of her heart and the quick pace of her breath. Where were her friends, those that she'd come in here with only—a glance at her watch told Roxy that it had already been an n hour. But hadn't they only just come in? Where was Jo?

Where was _Roxy_ right now?

She turned around, panic clawing at her insides, crawling up her throat. Was she truly alone but for the dead man one row over? Had they left her to wander in the dim light by herself with no idea of how to ever get out?

An attempt to call out for help revealed that Roxy's voice had left her, letting out a frightened squeak that could only just be heard over the loudness of her frightened heart.

This was it, wasn't it? This was how she died, in the stupid Hall of Prophecies, and all because dumb Tilly Longbottom couldn't keep her talk of ghosts far the hell away from Roxy. So much for all those people who had told Roxy that she was going to accomplish great things; the only thing that would be accomplished _now_ was that she would die in the cold and the dark all by herself and no one would ever be any the wiser.

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling a surge of self-pity wash over; it just wasn't fair. Roxy didn't even know _how_ she'd ended up by herself in the dark and now she was going to die because of it. What if—what if this was all a big joke? A big cosmic joke being played on her, just because the universe hated her. After all, what were the odds that _she_ was somehow important? What were the odds that _James Potter_ of all people would come back to the dead just to talk to her?

Clearly Roxy was just losing her mind and this was the natural progression. She was no hero, no trendsetter, no 'chosen one'. She wasn't Uncle Harry. Roxy wasn't—she just wasn't _important_ enough to do any of these sorts of things that James and others were so convinced she was destined to bring forth. This wasn't _her._

Roxanne Raechelle Weasley was a normal girl, that's all that she was and ever would be. So why was it that she was sitting by herself in the dark and in the cold, scared because of an abandoned dead man?

 _Because he's you. Abandoned, forgotten, left to rot. He's you, Roxy. He's what you've been allowed to become ever since Freddie died—nothing more than a decaying shell of a once upon a time little girl. You're barely even alive any more._

Head bent over her knees, Roxy sobbed quietly, wishing that anyone—any _thing—_ would come to her rescue at that moment. She didn't want to be here any more, left with a dead man and her thoughts for the rest of her life, not when there were things she needed to do—something to do with ghosts, she remembered, but it was so cold in this hallway that Roxy was having a difficult time focusing and keeping her thoughts organised.

There was a soft glowing out of the corner of her eye, making Roxy turn around to see one of the orbs flickering in and out, catching her attention. The orb—a prophecy, she remembered—seemed to call out to her, inviting Roxy to touch it, to listen to it. And, though every part of her brain screamed that this was a _very dumb thing to do, do not touch the strange, glowing orb_ , Roxy felt drawn to it. She reached out, hand making contact with cold, lifeless glass.

As the warmth of her body touched the orb, it changed colour, turning from golden light to a flashing bright blue that made Roxy look away and cover her eyes to avoid being blinded before it settled to a rich, deep purple before finally clearing enough in the centre to show a small picture of two people, whose features she could not make out, sitting at a table and conversing in low voices, their words unintelligible.

A woman's voice floated out and the original picture was replaced by that of a woman's image appearing in the glass. Roxy recognised neither voice nor face, but she was entranced by the image of a pale, blonde woman staring up at her and speaking in such an alluring tone that she could barely even remember her own name.

" _Two little girls_ ," said the women, and Roxy found herself mouthing the words along with this beautiful stranger, having memorised the words repeated to her by Lily and by Trelawney. " _Two little girls and they alone know how the world will end. They alone know when the kings will fall. They can see the truth like no one else—see how the world truly is, to see the world as it ends in flames and it ends in ice. Two little girls—and only they know the way out. We have to follow them._ "

Yes, the words were familiar, but that didn't explain why it was that Roxy could not pull away from this woman, from this little glass orb that seemed only capable of parroting a phrase she'd heard already. It was not new information, just the same song, hummed in a different key.

But then the woman looked upwards and continued speaking. " _Ghostly fire springs forth like rubies and wise men judge the receding dawn. Those with the power of which they know not warn of whispers from the north and go without being heard, but the day shall come soon and all shall end. Time—eternal, ticking, they know nothing of its nature and listen not to its words. It is the rubies and the wise that shall bring about our glory—or our destruction._ "

Roxy didn't know what that part meant, about rubies and wise men and dawn, but it sounded about as encouraging and promising as the first half of the prophecy and told very nearly the same message: people were going to die and it was up to _someone_ to help make sure things were fixed. She sighed, pulling her hands away from the prophecy, wishing it could have been a little more helpful in explaining _what_ would happen and how Roxy was meant to be involved.

 _That's not how prophecies work, silly girl. They don't tell you things for them to make sense. You should know that by now._

She flinched, head twisting around to look over her shoulder because Roxy could have sworn that the words came not from her own head but from someone behind her, a real person who could speak and breathe and show her the way out. But there was no one else here. Was she going crazy already? Seeing things that did not exist, hearing voices?

 _Silly, silly, foolish little girl._ Roxy spun around, but once again, nobody else was around to talk to her. _Oh, is that what you think? That because you cannot see me, I must not exist? I love the living, you mindless little wastes of space. You're such great...entertainment. And you, Miss Weasley, are one of my favourites._

"Who the hell are you?" she called out. It was the same voice that spoke through Lucy and Lorcan, both times before they attacked themselves—or, in Lorcan's case, tried to. It was the demonic voice, the animalistic one that hinted at horrors far greater than she would ever understand. "Why have you been bothering me? And why are you attacking people?"

 _Ah, yes, my little puppets. Perhaps now that I am getting stronger, I will not need them as much as I once did. I suppose this will be good news for you—unless I decide to continue our little dance just for my own amusement._

"You're sick," Roxy said with a low growl.

 _Perhaps. But I am also infinitely stronger and smarter and more powerful than you, the pitiful little girl that you are, so I suggest that you close that pretty mouth of yours and listen to what I have to say, or else I shall be forced to take drastic measures._

She crossed her arms, frowning at nothing. "What do you want to tell me?" she finally demanded; a force smashed into the back of her head, sending Roxy sprawling across the cold concrete. Her head hit a prophecy, sending it rolling against the floor, and just before she blacked out, Roxy could have sworn she saw a dark, large creature leaning over her, its hand resting on her forehead as it leant in to whisper into her ear.

 _Sleep now, Miss Weasley. Sleep and see the truth for what it is._

–

Roxy opened her eyes, squinting into the light that threatened to blind her; at first, she thought she must have died and this was some form of heaven, with bright lights shining over her from every corner, but then the glare dimmed to a more tolerable level and Roxy realised that she'd been transported to St Mungo's and was sitting next to Lucy's bed, watching over torn back sheets and a limp pillow.

Lucy was gone, though run off somewhere or taken, Roxy could not say. She only knew this to be her cousin's bed from having visited her so many times, memorising her location and distance from the door.

She wandered around, observing the various sleeping victims—there were seven, or, there would be if Lucy were here. But currently laying in their beds, oblivious to the small girl watching them, were three girls and three males, including Kieran, whose face was ashy. All of them were unbearably thin, almost skeletal, and they were clearly only alive because of the tireless work that Healers and mediwizards had put into them over the past few months.

An attempt to open the ward door revealed that it had been locked from the outside, which Roxy thought was strange. Why lock away someone who could not get up to leave anyway? Unless they were trying to keep someone from getting _in—_ but if that were the case, then how had Roxy found herself here, and where was Lucy gone to?

Realising that there was simply no way out, Roxy walked back over to Kieran's bed, leaning over him, her back to the door. He was still breathing, at least, though every small gasp clearly was a struggle, causing him pain and using up so much effort for such a small act. How much longer could he go on like this?

How much longer could _any_ of them go on like this, day after day, week after week, sleeping and dying, turning into nothing more than skeletal figures? And the fact that this might all be _Roxy's_ fault made it that much worse. If people really were being put in danger because she refused to back down in her search for ghosts—well, there was always a lot of talk about Slytherins being heartless monsters; this would only prove those old adages true, about the only Slytherin that ever existed was the one that looked to bite off the head of those around it.

"Roxy?"

The smaller girl whirled around to see her cousin standing in front of the doorway, clutching a small bag in her hands. Lucy had bags under her eyes and her hair was long, dirty, and tangled. Shadows were deeply evident on her face and there were hints of bruises on her arms and legs, which were bare and filthy with mud and—was that _blood_?

"Lucy, what's happened to you?" Roxy demanded, rushing forward to greet her cousin. St Mungo's was a _hospital_ , the exactly least likely place you'd expect to find someone wandering around in dirty rags and bleeding all over the place. "Where're the Healers, maybe they can help get you cleaned up."

Lucy shook her head, eyes big, as though she were staring not only _at_ Roxy but _into_ Roxy, seeing the younger girl's soul and her thoughts and her memories. "There are no Healers here, Roxanne. But you should be smart enough to know that already. After all, how does a girl get from darkness in the Department of Mysteries to hospital room of St Mungo's, if not by mysterious and magical means? Or did you think someone rescued you from your own personal hell?"

Roxy shook her head, not sure _what_ she was meant to think of all this. One moment she's being hit over the head by black clouds and the next, she's here in the overly bright St Mungo's, talking to her cousin, who was exactly decidedly _unlike_ the Lucy that Roxy had grown up with over the years.

"Why are you acting so cruelly? What's gotten into you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings, Roxy? Did the little baby cousin get her feelings hurt again because someone told her the _truth_?" Lucy smirked, her pink lips tight and cold. "But there's no Teddy here to run to and cry over all your problems with, now is there? No, no, because _here_ in this damn hellhole, there's just you, me, and a bunch of monsters."

"Monsters?" Roxy didn't understand.

"Yeah, monsters, Roxy. And they're bigger and scarier and a whole lot meaner than I am, trust me. As heartless as I might be, they're a hundred times worse. They chase me all day and all night, attacking me, trying to kill me, because I'm the only one still awake enough to attract their attention. _I_ get to suffer for the rest of eternity because someone woke me up, instead of leaving me to die, like I was meant to do."

Roxy frowned, frightened by her cousin's words. "Don't you want to stay alive, Lucy?"

"Let's get one thing straight, _little cousin_. I'm only alive any more because...because no one will let me die. Because the only thing I _want_ now is for everything to just be free, but you—you people just don't know when to let go, do you? Don't know when enough is enough. Kieran over there—" She pointed towards where his sleeping body laid. "—well, I guess _he's_ still around because he genuinely wants to be alive. For some reason. I can't fathom it at all. I mean, what is so great about being alive that everyone's always trying to force me to stay around? I'm tethered to this damn place by potions and charms and by my mother's incessant nagging and the real question is always—why? What good does it do anyone if I'm still alive or not? If I die today or if I live another eighty years? I'll die eventually regardless, no matter how much everyone stresses that it's important I stay. And you know what's the craziest part of it all, Rox?"

"What?" Lucy was acting— _no_. The days for calling her cousin crazy was far gone. She wasn't crazy, she was one of the smartest people of their generation because she was one of the few people left who could see the world for how it truly was.

Lucy laughed. It was a cruel laugh, much too cruel for such a sweet girl like her; Lucy had spent far too long here in this strange limbo.

"We're all going to die soon enough anyway. There's a war coming, Rox, and I don't just mean the kind of war a teenage girl goes through when she's deciding between two dates for the dance. People are going to die, and people are going to die _bloody_. I know all of their names, all of their faces, even the ones I've never met before. All those poor people. It's enough to drive anybody—" Lucy tilted her head, staring directly at Roxy, and smiled coldly. "—mad. Names bouncing around and months of solitary confinement with only unconscious bodies to talk to. No, no, what's the in my head, yet I don't really _have_ a head here for them to bounce around in. Sweet little Lucy, always the innocent Hufflepuff that everyone loves to pat on the head. Everybody called me crazy when the only thing I was ever doing was speaking the truth. Well, I'm crazy now, aren't I? Months point, what's the point of it all if we're just going to die? Better to give up now than to be incinerated like insects later on."

"How can you talk like that?" Roxy asked, shaking her head. She didn't want to think about things like wars and dying.

"Weren't you just the one bemoaning the fact that you were going to die alone while a war waged on without you around to help? Or has my darling little cousin turned into a hypocrite during my imprisonment?" Lucy's teeth glinted in the light, sharper and longer than was normal. "What a shame that your worry will come to pass. You'll never get to meet _me_."

Blood froze as easily as her ability to move; Roxy was glued to her spot, brow furrowed, heart beating quickly. Realisation washed over her and drenched Roxy in a cold sweat. "Me?" she echoed in a whisper. "Who is me? Where is Lucy? The _real_ Lucy?"

The creature that was not Lucy smirked its lip curling upwards in a mocking expression. "Clever little girl, aren't you? I was worried I would have to tell you before you would finally figure things out." Roxy glared at the thing, crossing her arm. "Your darling cousin is safely out of my reach for not, don't you fret, young Weasley." It snapped its fingers and Lucy's sleeping form appeared in her empty bed, just as eerie and still as the other victims. "Well, as safe as one can get when you are in a St Mungo's ward on your death bed, I suppose. But," it sighed, "every battle must have some victims, yes?"

"What do you want with me? Why'd you bring me here?"

The creature wearing Lucy's face smirked. "To show you the truth, of course! Did you not listen to what your cousin said? Oh, it might have been my words she spoke, but everything I said is nothing less than sentiments she truly shares. Your cousin—as I said—is out of my reach _for now_ but my monsters will find her again soon enough, and we will begin the cycle all over again." It clapped its hands together in glee. "I do so love hunting humans down. In fact, perhaps I will make you my next victim, Roxanne Weasley, what do you think?" It laughed coldly. "But I have kept you long enough. Nap time is over," it said, tapping her on the forehead, which caused Roxy to fall to the ground once more, drowsy.

The creature wearing Lucy's face faded back into a dark mist once again before disappearing altogether, leaving Roxy on the floor of St Mungo's.

–

A hand gripped her shoulder, shaking Roxy back to conscious. Through bleary eyes, she looked up at Jo, who leant over her friend with concern obviously written across her features.

"We worried you'd get lost and we'd never find you," Jo whispered, pulling Roxy into a tight hug for a few seconds before she pulled away to yell behind her, "I found Roxy! She's down here! Hurry, her lips are starting to turn blue."

"Jo?" Roxy murmured, head fuzzy and limbs heavy. "Where'd you come from?"

"We've been following you to make sure you were okay though I'll be honest and tell you that you disappeared on us for a long time. But c'mon, Brennan and Tilly are going to be here any second and we'll get you warmed up and head towards the archives. Can you stand up for me?"

Roxy, with help from her best friend, rose on shaking legs; the two of them slowly made their way down the corridor of prophecy after prophecy, all gleaming and glinting in the dim light, though none of them seemed to call out Roxy's name, thankfully.

"How'd you even _get_ this far in?" Jo asked teasingly, but Roxy only shrugged, not certain of much at the moment. She couldn't remember a whole lot beyond vague memories of a blonde woman warning her about rubies and wise men.

Behind the two girls, out of their site, the orb that Roxy had held in her hands rolled back and forth slightly in its spot, as though someone had bumped into it by accident.


	35. Entering the archives

It was impossible to shake the feeling that something was following the quartet, no matter how many times Roxy looked over her shoulder and whispered to herself that _of course_ there was no one else and she was just imagining things, like she'd imagined Lucy and the dead man from earlier.

Oh, yes, the dead body that she had tripped over and had a huge meltdown about—through incoherent, panicked gulps of air, Roxy explained to Brennan that she'd found a corpse one row over from where they discovered her, but when he went to check (the other two girls refused to look) he came back to report that there was no one else around, alive _or_ dead.

"Perhaps they were further away than you thought?" Brennan offered half-heartedly though it was obvious that he didn't there was a body at all, nor had there ever been.

And perhaps he was right—perhaps Roxy _had_ imagined the man, a hallucination brought on by fear and confusion and her brain shutting down from the intense cold that filled the air. But she didn't think that was the case. After all, Roxy had _tripped_ over the body. What hallucination was so strong that it could interact with and disrupt that which was real and had actual form?

It just didn't very likely, which unfortunately meant that there was probably an actual dead body somewhere in here that had never been found.

The thought made her shiver, but Roxy shook her head to clear her mind of such ideas. She was more than ready to leave the dead men and the disturbing prophecies behind her—far, _far_ behind her.

"How much further is it, Brennan?" Tilly asks, breaking the silence that the quartet had been walking in for the last ten or fifteen minutes.

( _Of course it would be Tilly to complain about us taking too long_ , Roxy thought, feeling surly because no one believed her.)

"It's not that much more if you'd only move a little faster," snapped Brennan. "You three are so slow, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that you were part-snail or a were-sloth."

"We wouldn't have taken so long if Roxy hadn't run off in search of corpses!" Tilly insisted, her cheeks bright red. "If you're going to snap at people, she's right over there, so you can leave me out of it."

Roxy rolled her eyes. After everything that had happened in the last six months, Tilly was just as immature as she always was during school, blaming everyone else for every little thing that went wrong in life.

(And they'd forgotten entirely that she _wasn't_ chasing corpses, but had rather been pulled by a weird prophecy that messed with her head. Roxy didn't want anything to do with corpses any more than Tilly did.)

How was she even _related_ to Professor and Madame Longbottom, who were nothing but kind, friendly, and helpful people?

"My sincerest apologies for inconveniencing you, Tilly, I'll certainly try my hardest to avoid being possessed in the future to avoid such insensitive behaviour. After all, my greatest concern in life has always been to make sure that _your_ life is absolutely perfect, especially everything surrounding me has turned out so incredibly full of shite."

'Yes, because you've had it so terribly hard, haven't you, Weasley? Always appearing in _The Daily Prophet_ , getting put on a Quidditch team right away because of your mum—things are _so_ difficult for you!" Tilly spun around to glare at Roxy, holding up in her wand in a menacing gesture that did very little to truly alarm Roxy.

Tilly may have been smart, but she was never a very goo duellist during their school days, especially compared to Roxy, and both girls knew that very well.

"I'm sorry, is your father dead? Are your siblings dead? Does your mother cry herself to sleep at night because she's afraid to roll over and see the empty side of her bed? Did you get placed into Slytherin and have to deal with bullying and teasing and jokes about how you'd be the next Dark Lord, destined to fight your own family purely because of the colour of your tie? But please, tell me about how much harder your life has been, with your happy family and perfect grades and friends who don't get spit on when they walk down the street just because of the actions of their fathers and grandfathers, uncles or brothers. Yes, you must have had it so terribly hard, Tilly Longbottom! I positively _weep_ for you!"

Tilly was flustered, and the hand that held her wand was twitching like she still expected a fight to break out, while the other hand opened and closed, grasping at the air. She looked away, turning her head from Roxy's burning gaze, from Jo's tense expression, and even from Brennan, who appeared shocked and confused—clearly, he did not know the dark story of poor Roxanne Weasley.

"I'm not saying your life hasn't been hard, Tilly, but other people have had it bad, too, and it all sucks, because no one deserves to have bad things happen to them. But you don't have to make it worse by being mean to other people," Roxy said quietly, and was happy to see Tilly at least nod as indication that she'd heard.

"And on that note, before you girls start hugging and crying and all that feminine bullshit, can we please just go into the archives?" Brennan asked with a small sneer. He pointed at a simple door at the end of the row that they were walking down. There was no sign hanging on it, no sense of wonder to inform Roxy that they had finally made it to their destination, but there they finally were, at the archives.

And now was the time to get some bloody answers.

–

The archives were nothing other than even more rows of shelves upon shelves, exactly identical to the room they had just left if one simply replaced prophecies with stacks of organised parchment and lit the place with real torches that made it possible to actually see instead of the poorly-lit, very eerie blue lights that made it difficult to see much more than half a metre in front of you.

As Brennan explained—with mor than just a hint of pride in his voice as he stretched his arms out widely—everything in here was filed away alphabetically and then by how old it was. There were documentaries on this shel ranging from mere days old to older than the Ministry itself, carefully charmed with preserving spells to keep them from collapsing into the piles of dust they ought to be by collapsing.

"Be careful about touching anything," warned Brennan sternly, handing out gloves. "If something happens to even a single piece of information, you'll be responsible for the destruction of history itself!"

Jo leaned over to Roxy, smirking as she muttered, "I'm pretty sure that Brennan is the only one here who cares about history."

The older male must have heard them because he shot them both a nasty look before continuining his speech.

"I think it would be in the best interest of the group if we all split up and take over an area to look through in order to save on time, instead of following one person around." He gave the room a thoughtful look, subdividing shelves into who would search what. "We can quarter the alphabet and each take a portion. How about...I'll do A to F, Tilly can have I to L, Roxy gets M to S, and Jo can have everything left."

"You've given Rox and I a whole letter more than your or Tilly," said Jo with a scowl. "Oughtn't you do the most, since you know where everything is and since you're so bloody worried about something happening to your poor old parchment?"

"Take it as a token of my faith in the two of you," Brennan replied sweetly, waving his wand to summor four candles for each of them and tossing out gloves.

"More like a token of how lazy he is," muttered Jo, but Roxy only stepped on her friend's foot to get her to stop talking. They needed to get through all of the papers and leave this place as soon as they possibly could—there was simply no time to be starting arguments every few minutes just because someone's feelings were being hurt over every little thing.

 _Hypocrite_ , growled the voice in her head. _You were just picking a fight with Tilly not five minutes ago._ Roxy shook that thought away, reasoning that her 'fight' with Tilly was different because it hadn't _really_ been a fight—she'd merely been correcting the Ravenclaw's incorrect opinions in a slightly agitated, passive-aggressive...okay, _entirely aggressive_ nature.

Taking a candle from Brennan, Roxy headed off towards the shelf marked 'M', resigned to a long, tedious hunt through papers covered in enough dust and beetles to keep her coughing for the next fifty years at least.

It was a shame they couldn't be searching around somewhere with slightly less dust.

–

Roxy was hald-way through the Ps before she finally found anything of note—a copy of the Potter family tree stretching back to the twelfth century, marking marriages, births, deaths, all dwindling down to 1981, when James and Lily Potter (nee Evans) had been murdered on the thirty-first of October.

This was not unusual, apparently, as many of the family trees that Roxy had come across during her search so far hadn not been updated in several decades, as though whoever were in charge of filling out family histories had gotten up from work one day and never come back.

She wondered why that was, that people like her cousins or the Malfoy children were not filled in when there was still plenty fo room on the magically enlarged stretch of parchment for the names of future generation to be filled in.

But the real thing that caught her eye about Uncle Harry's family tree was the miniscule markings next to nearly a dozen names across the eight centuries of history that she was searching.

The little marks might have escaped her notice altogether if she had not come across the name Elgus Potter, born in 1910, who married Antonia Diggory in 1940 and had one child, a daughter named Elisabeth, born in 1945. she was James Potter the first's much older cousin, practically a woman before he was even born.

And according to the key at the top of the tree, which Roxy had to climb a shelf to see—having pinned it up to observe the whole thing at once—both Elisabeth and her youngest daughter Rachel both showed signs of having Seer's blood, a trait passed down by other smatterings of Potter women over the years.

If the ability to see the future was hidden away in the Potter family, what if that meant that the "prophecy" that both Roxy and Lily had passed off as a freak accident was actually a _real_ prophecy, brought on through the dormant power inside of Roxy's older cousin?

Was it possible that Lily actually _could_ see glimpses into the future, even just errantly, random and brief scatterings of images and voices that warned of darker tomorrows?

Roxy pushed the family tre aside, sending it back to its box with a flick of her wand before moving on to the next file, deciding to skip ahead a few letters. There was simply no way of proving anything about Lily being a Seer or not, and that wasn't what about Lily being a Seer or not, and that wasn't what she was here for; and there was still a large number of parchments to go through, and not much time to waste on theories that couldn't be proven.

There were piles around her of page after page after page of just... _crap_. So much of it was merely tedious paperwork about the construction of the Ministry, of theories surrounding the Hall of Prophecies, and so many incomplete family trees that Roxy was pretty sure she knew more ancestors of old wizarding families than they probably did.

She'd come across the Malfoy family tree half an hour ago, completed enough to have Scorpius and his younger sister, Petra, but not the youngest of the Malfoy children, little Lyra, who was twelve, blonde, chatty, and oddly enough, a Hufflepuff—which was unheard amongst the Malfoy family, who had been Slytherins for generations.

"Someone should really update these trees," Roxy muttered to no one in particular (mostly because she was alone) then puased to listen to the sounds of the other three ruffling through old information, Summoning and Banishing various files, sighing as the minutes passed and became a full hour and they came not even the slightest bit closer to some kind of an answer.

Roxy tossed one piece of parchment in the direction of the largest nearby stack, letting out a heavy sigh. They weren't finding anything of real use and, honestly, Roxy didn't think they were _ever_ going to find anything because there was nothing here to find but garbage.

This was just one more failure that came from putting any sort of trust into the likes of Tilly Longbottom.

(Apparently, someone in the universe decided that Roxy hadn't had enough of an unpredictable—or possibly far _too_ predictable—day.)

She went to toss another file, but stopped at the last moment, catching the edge with her fingertips to keep it from spinning away. The title caughther attention, marked S/Spirit Sighings/Potter, James/27 July, 2013–1 April, 2024.

"Spirit Sightings?" she whispered, pulling away the cover, more than a little curious. Was this the answer that she'd come here looking for? It couldn't be a coincidence, seeing James Potter's name written at the top of a file, one thick stack of papers pulled out quite literally millions.

Roxy didn't believe in coincidences or fate or luck—someone had set this up, someone had designed it that she would find this particular file, because what were the odds that out of all the files that were stored in here, she would just happen to be placed in the section where the important information was, and just happen to pick up the exact file that would give her that exact information when a normal person could come in here every day for the rest of their life and never find it?

Shaking her head, Roxy opened up the case, knowing that, even if someone _had_ left this here for her to find, there was most likely important information in it that she had to read.

There was a note spellotaped over the very first page, a personal note that had all of the usual professional Ministry stampings that meant the writing had not been tampered with or edited in any way. Someone had written this—and a Ministry official had included it, which meant they felt it was either safe enough to be read, or that they thought it was important enough to be kept.

" _My name is Erick Tarving. I am a member of the Ghost and Ghouls Division of the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures. At the beginning of my investigations, back in 2009, I was only twenty-six, fairly young to be placed in the Head position of an entire program. It makes sense, then, that I was the "Head" of a team of one—me._ "Look through old reports. File information on ghosts and spectres and everything else. Take down witness reports." _It seemed like a fairly shitty job to me, the sort of thing they hand off as a joke, or as a means of putting a future-less employee to work somehow because there's simply nowhere else to throw them in. As of my writing this, fifteen years later, I have come to realise that I_ was _expected to go nowhere with this assignment. Like others put onto these cases since 2005, the higher-ups didn't think I'd last more than a few months before burning out and quitting from frustration. Well, joke's on them, I guess. I'll be forty-one this May and I have no intention of quitting anytime soon. I like it here with my ghosts and my kooky stories of visitors from the beyond coming to warn us. I also like that there is a steady income, enough to keep my daughter in decent clothes and always with a new-enough broom._

 _Oh, dear Emily. I'm so sorry that things had to go this way._

 _I'm writing this note with the expectation that I won't live long enough to see my forty-first birthday. That's fine with me. I'm no hero, going out in a blaze of glory, but if I die before my investigations end, at least I know that I will have gotten that much closer to an answer for questions that seem to plague no one else in the world. I am an adventurer on my own, setting out on a journey where there are only obstacles to be found, but it cannot be said that I ever gave up the fight._

 _The following is, amongst the hundreds of cases that I have looked into, quite possibly the most interesting of them all. He—that which I am forced to refer to as Subject 2987—has appeared so many times over the last fifteen years, more than any other case subject, and each appearance seems to harbour only more questions and curiosities."_

Roxy peeled the note off to begin reading about this "most interesting" subject.

" _27 July, 2013—Case SS2987 S#1_

 _Witness—unnamed here due to a personal wish to remain anonymous—claims to have seen a spectre at roughly 2100 hours, forty-six minutes. Witness claims that spectre—hereto referred to as Spectre 2987—took the form of one Potter, James Augustus, who was born on 27 March, 1960 and passed away on 31 October, 1981 at roughly twenty-one years of age. Spectre 2987 was unobserved by anyone other than our witness, who admits to being, quote"more than a little drunk at the time", end quote, though they repeatedly insisted that what was seen was, in fact, Spectre 2987, as it spoke to and even attempted to make physical contact with the witness, though this was apparently unsuccessful._

 _This marking Sighting #1 for Spectre 2987. Please see case file for further entries._

 _Edit: Witness—Amos Diggory (I'm allowed to state their name only in edits, if I wish, so says my supervisor, who thinks I'm barking mad for doing any of this), aged fifty-nine, has been admitted to St Mungo's for unusual injuries that Healers claim appear to have been self-inflicted, as though he attempted to use Sectumsempra against himself. Some have begun to speculate that this was an attempted suicide following years of depression after the death of his only son, Cedric. I am not allowed to speculate, again by the proclamations of my lovely supervisor."_

Roxy frowned and turned to the next page.

" _14 March, 2015—Case SS2987 S#2_

 _Witness reports seeing Spectre 2987 standing outside of their home where it, quote, "stared up at me for going on half an hour before disappearing suddenly", end quote. It is unknown why Spectre 2987 did not attempt contact, at in S #1, nor is there any apparent connection between the two sightings. Witness only recognised Spectre 2987 from old photos of_ The Daily Prophet _. This marks sighting #1._

 _Edit: Witness—now named for legal purposes as Tyrius Burke, age twenty-six (because fuck my supervisor, I'm naming these bastards if they're all going to die afterwards)—passed away on 19 March, 2025 due to what can only be referred to as "an accidental fall due to a seemingly unexpected fright". It is unknown if this is connected in any way to his sighting claim five days earlier._

 _Investigations are on-going._

Roxy flipped through the pages more quickly, noticing the dates but little else as she added up the number of sightings over the years of James Potter.

" _4 November, 2016 Case SS2987 S#5_

 _Witness saw—"_

" _11 March, 2019 Case SS2987 S#11_

 _Witness claims—"_

" _9 June, 2019 Case SS2987 S#14_

 _Witness felt—"_

" _30 August, 2021 Case SS2987 S#17_

 _Witness—"_

" _11 September, 2021 Case SS2987 S#18_

 _Witness—"_

" _1 December, 2021 Case SS2987 S#24_

 _Witness—"_

" _14 April, 2023_ _Case SS2987 S#39"_

" _26 May, 2023_ _Case SS2987 S#42_ _"_

" _19 July, 2023_ _Case SS2987 S#46_ _"_

" _14 August, 2023_ _Case SS2987 S#48_ _"_

" _7 October, 2023_ _Case SS2987 S#56_ _"_

She reached the very last one, marked from 1 April, 2024, a date burnt into Roxy's memory for a multitude of reasons. It had been her father's forty-sixth birthday—and also the date that marked his last hours on Earth.

" _1 April, 2024_ _Case SS2987 S#67_

 _Witness—oh, screw it. This case will be closed soon enough, the same as all the rest, as the Ministry seems to think that the years of research I have put into this project means nothing, having not enough value to continue funding, a decision made by men in fancy robes that had never read a scrap of my work. So I can write honestly. Freely. No more hiding behind fancy government terms to avoid ever really getting to a conclusive answer._

 _I saw him._

 _I_ saw _him. Spectre 2987, James Potter, whatever hell you want to call him, that smug, dead bastard who's haunted so many others before me. What matters is that he appeared to_ me _. And he wasn't alone, which is the part I can barely comprehend._

 _George Weasley, one of the younger Weasley sons—he's—he's my age, or close_ _enough and right now, he and James Potter are staring through my office window, waving at me any time that I look up from scribbling these words. They're waiting for me, I know it. The stories about spectres that warn of death are as old as death itself._

 _It just came on the_ radio— _George Weasley, forty-six, dead. I was the first to know. They're waiting on me, and though I ought to be frightened, all I can feel is the peace of what must be my final moments. James Potter, come to guide me into the next world. No one will ever know the truth, which is that ghosts walk amongst us, and they're all over the place. And my program is getting shut down next week anyway—"_ all your witnesses are old drunks or aren't reliable sources. We're terribly sorry, _" they say, "_ but there is simply no room in the budget for frivolous excess like the Spirit Sightings Program." _I'm being reassigned—to gnomes! Bloody gnomes, can you believe that's what they're tossing me into after all I've done for this blasted program, to prove that there_ are _ghosts still out there in the world. But it doesn't matter because James Potter is waiting for me and..."_

A note was spellotaped at the bottom where the hand trailed off without an obviously defined end. Clearly someone had been assigned tor read through years and years of sightings before filing them away to this dusty old shelf.

" _In regards to the notes from 1-4-24_ _(S#67)_ _, Ministry employee Erick Tarving has been formally released from his position in the Ghost and Ghouls Division of the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures._

 _The sum of his remaining salary shall be paid to Mella Tarving (relation: sister) and Emily Tarving (relation: daughter), as per his last will and testament._

 _Moment of death: estimated at 6:58 pm, 1 April, 2024._

 _Body located: 9:12 am, 2 April 2024._

 _Cause of death: unclear, speculated heart attack._

 _Decision for records: sent to Ministry archives, located in the Department of Mysteries, to be labelled Case SS2987/DCMC/2656._

 _This program is declared officially CLOSED as of 9 August, 2024._

 _Signed by Judith Pucey."_

Roxy took a deep breath, looking at the file in her hands before she suddenly shut it without saying a word. There were others—more than two dozen files from what she could see at a mere glance—with Tarving's name written at the top, filed under _Spirit Sightings Program 2009-2024_. here were her answers. Here were her explanations. Here, finally, was a step in the right direction, towards figuring out what happened to all of the ghosts and to finding out what it was that the living were meant to be so afraid of.

"Hey, you guys?" she called out, scooping up the files in her arms and standing up. "I think I found something!"


	36. To infinity and (beyond)

With so many family members that made up the Weasley-Potter family, it felt like there was a birthday party or some other type of celebration being thrown every other week, with Roxy's weekends dedicated to finding just _the_ perfect gift for Aunt Fleur or Hugo or her grandparent's anniversary.

Today was no exception, with Lily turning twenty-one as well as officially revealing the gender of her baby, a secret she had kept up until now, well into month seven, despite knowing herself for quite some time.

Lily hadn't even let Aunt Ginny know the truth, insisting that no one else _needed_ to now until Lily was ready to tell them.

Apparently today was that day.

But there was also Granddad's birthday happening on Monday and Aunt Fleur's on Sunday, which were both usually lumped together with Lily's for convenience's sake. This was simply how things worked in the Weasley family—even birthdays could not be special, personal occasions. Not that Roxy was complaining. At least there were presents.

* * *

On the Sunday before, Lily had brought up her desire to have her birthday at the Potter home, and that it would meet _her_ liking, which Aunt Ginny and Grandmum hadn't appreciated, but to which Granddad agreed with quickly, giving Lily a pleasant smile.

(Apparently he had decided to be smart and _not_ get into an argument with the great debater that was Lily Potter.)

It was good that, of all the family members, Granddad and Aunt Fleur were the one to share a birthday celebration with Lily, since she loved so very much to be the centre of attention whenever possible and both adults were more than willing to let Lily have the celebrations focus entirely on her so that they could just enjoy being with their family for the day.

"And since this is _my_ party, I get to decide who to invite, right? So, no ex-boyfriends—"

"Well, there goes half of Britain," James said with a chuckle, but Lily only glared at him until her older brother stopped grinning at his attempt at a joke.

"I suppose since I'll be discussing, that it'd be appropriate for Tolkien to be there, but none of the others. _And_ I also don't want to invite any of the Professors this year, either. Or Mum's Quidditch friends or Dad's Auror friends. It's _my_ party." Lily crossed her arms and looked around at her extended family with an intense expression on her face to indicate that there would be absolutely no exceptions to this request—or demand, rather, which was what it really was.

(Roxy thought that Lily was being a bit childish, in all honesty. It was just a birthday party.)

"What about Professor Longbottom, dear? Don't you like to have him at your parties? He's always been so close to our family, it'd be wrong not to invite him, don't you agree?" Aunt Ginny reached across the table to pat her daughter's hand, but Lily only pulled away, rolling her eyes in annoyance.

"Mum, he's _your_ friend, not mine, and besides that, I cannot _stand_ his daughter, Tilly. She's so full of herself just because she was in Ravenclaw and her dad is a professor and he'll probably be the next Headmaster, like all of that somehow makes her better than everyone else."

"And you _aren't_ full of yourself? You don't think you're better than everyone you've ever met?" Albus, who sat to Roxy's left, spoke in such a low tone that she was pretty sure that no one else was able to hear what he had said.

She gave him a grin when Lily wasn't looking and her cousin winked in return.

"But it's my birthday, so we're gonna have the party my way, yeah?" Lily's voice left no room for doubt that she would absolutely through the biggest fit right then and there if anyone dared to continue disagreeing with her.

* * *

And that was how they arrived here, six days later, standing in the Potter house while music played and Aunt Ginny kept running around, yelling at Lily's friends to keep their feet off of the sofa and to turn the music down and to slow down on the Butterbeer and Firewhiskey until she finally gave up and headed up to her and Uncle Harry's bedroom with the insistence that absolutely no one wake her up until it was time to cut the cake, disappearing with the threat that anyone who did wake her up would suffer at the hand of her most powerful Bat-Bogey Hex that she could manage.

(It was a pretty frightening idea, to say the least.)

Roxy didn't know even half of the people that Lily had somehow packed into the house, which was much larger than the Diagon Alley flat or even the Burrow, yet was still overflowing with people. Various guests kept walking past to get food and drinks and Roxy's couldn't have guessed a single one of their names or where they would have ever met Lily before now.

Everything felt so differently now that she was more focused on finding out and uncovering what was beginning to feel like all the secrets to the universe. There simply wasn't time to go out and party at all hours with so many other people like Lily seemed to be doing even though she was more than seven months pregnant.

(Lily _swore_ that she didn't drink or do drugs when she went out, but she also swore that she loved Grandmum's Christmas jumpers and then never, ever wore them—in fact, Roxy knew there was a pile of them sitting in the back of Lily's closet right at this very moment.)

Roxy didn't agree with any of it. She didn't really agree with a lot of the things that Lily did, especially recently, but Roxy also didn't think she was in much of a position to say anything about it whenever Lily went farther than was wise. After all, it didn't matter if Lily was the far less mature of the two cousins, she was still older and Roxy wouldn't have felt comfortable telling Lily off anyway.

Usually, she was only confrontational when it came to Tilly or her more obnoxious co-workers and even then, there were limits.

Besides that, her head was far too busy bussing with thoughts of what she had found in the archives to properly focus on Lily's out of control behaviour or her party full of people that Roxy didn't know in the slightest. There were far more important things consuming her life at that moment, as condescending as saying such a thing sounded.

Brennan had wanted to take the files to his house, insisting that as the eldest (and the only male, though at least he hadn't had the indecency to say as much out loud) he was the most mature and was capable of taking care of the files, considering that he was the only of one the four of them that even worked in the archives and, therefore, had the most experience in handling papers of a sensitive nature such as these.

The girls, unanimous for once, argued tha this was entirely the wrong thing to do on the grounds that he wasn't actually part of the group and so, Roxy now had a box of stolen Ministry files sitting underneath her bed like a bomb that was just waiting to go off at a moment's notice.

And in another (absolutely terrifying) big change of her life—Jo, Roxy, and her co-worker Aniya would all be moving into a flat together in the recently constructed private housing sector of Diagon Alley. It was a new idea, having people living in the area who didn't own shops below them. In fact, there would be no shops beneath those flats, only more and more flats, more families or individuals or friends occupying the space.

There had been a bit of a backlash from the local store owners, who felt that Diagon Alley was _theirs_ and theirs alone but the houses and flats were built and people like Roxy and her friends were moving in.

they were only on the third day of February and already, Roxy was astounded at how much her life had changed.

"Hey, Roxy!" Lily came over, throwing an arm around her younger cousin. Lily's stomach pushed against the edge of her _Weird Sisters_ shirt, and Roxy couldn't help but wonder how someone so pregnant could move so quickly.

"Hi, Lils." Roxy gave the birthday girl a weak grin, not able to make herself behave as enthusiastically as Lily probably her to be. "This is a fun party, isn't it? Lots of people, lots of food, lots of loud music? So much fun."

Lily didn't look convinced in the slightest.

"So listen, Roxy-Rox, I need your help with something, yeah?" She raised an unsteady hand to pat Roxy's shoulder. "I may have invited Tolkien to my party and he might be around here somewhere but I don't want to talk to him, but I _also_ don't want to make him leave because that'd be a mean thing to do, you get me?"

"So you want me to keep him company and make sure he doesn't get into any trouble, is that what you're asking me?"

Lily clasped her hands around Roxy's neck in an awkward hug before pulling away to nod enthusiastically, looking pleased. "Oh, would you be such a dear? I know Tolkien's always liked you and he's not _that_ bad of a guy except for the bit where he's a tad unreliable about being a dad though I can't really hold that against him since I don't intend on being a mum."

"Did you finally find someone to adopt?"

"No, but Gran agreed to take it off my hands after I give birth. I think she just really misses having a little kid to look after, even if she is pushing eighty."

"She has always done whatever she could to keep us as a close family unit."

Lily nodded, drifting off a few seconds later when someone else called out her name, leaving Roxy to stand by the kitchen door, awkwardly clutching a cup of Butterbeer, with nothing to do. Perhaps she _would_ go talk to Tolkien, for at least he was _someone_ to talk to rather than standing here silently by herself for the rest of the party.

Making up her mind, Roxy wandered throughout the house, waving few people she did know (mostly family members) and flounced into every room she could find to see if Tolkien was around.

It wasn't just that Lily wanted them to talk to each other for some reason (Merlin forbid that Lily was trying to set Roxy up with the father of Lily's child). She actually did want to talk to Tolkien about the events of Mia's New Year's party and his disappearance for the entire month following that, when no one knew where he'd gone off to or why he'd returned.

He ended up being found in the library on the second floor, blankly admiring the wooden finishing of the fireplace and humming quietly to himself.

Tolkien looked differently than he had a month ago; his hair was long and shaggy, with a small clump near the front of his face turned snowy white in contrast to the dark, near-black of the rest of his hair. He had bags under his eyes that made it look like he'd been punched several hundred times and his whole body twitched every few seconds, as though someone was pinching at his sides for their own amusement.

He was now little more than a shell of the Tolkien from a month ago, now turned into a nervous, anxious creature that was ready to jump out of his skin at the slightest provocation.

"Tolkien?" she called quietly, waving at him; Tolkien twitched and looked up at her, opening his mouth widely before letting his face relax into a smile.

"He found you, didn't he?" Tolkien's eyes were wide—she would have almost said they appeared to be vibrating, what with the intensity with which he held her gaze.

"Who did? You mean James Potter?"

Tolkien nodded, letting his head bob from side to side as he spoke, a marionette with limp strings. "He likes to talk to people and he acts like he's just here to help but sometimes people will try to help and it only ends up making things worse and I'm sure he didn't mean to make things worse but that's just what happens sometimes, right?"

"Tolkien, are you alright? Where have you been since January- no one's seen you since the party and now—now you're not making any sense at all and—"

"The dead are just so selfish, you know? They can't forget what it was like to be alive but their brains, if they even still have brains, are also so full of being dead, being able to see all of the time and its infiniteness."

"Tolkien?"

He turned away for a moment, blinking back tears before turning his gaze to her, blue eyes so intense that Roxy was suddenly looking into twin blue suns, far too bright for anyone to focus on for any length of time. She looked away. "I get to see the infinity and everything beyond it. The living aren't supposed to look into the end of everything but I did, didn't I?" He chuckled. "Better than any drug I've ever tried, muggle or magic. It's power drives the spirits insane, those that look too long, so imagine what it must have done to me." Another chuckle. "I'm a nutter now. It's a good thing Lily broke up with me, isn't it, now that I'm crazy?"

"Who says you're crazy, Tolkien?" She reached out to put a hand on his shoulder but Tolkien fell away from her grasp, shaking his head. "Tolkien," she said softly, "you aren't crazy, you just need to let me help you, okay? I'm on your side, I know what's going on."

"After all this time, do you still not believe?!" he snapped her roughly, growling with frustration.

"Considering what I've seen in the last few days?" She felt like laughing. "I believe you when you say that dark forces dragged you off to look at eternity and I believe that we probably shouldn't be looking at stuff like that but I don't think that means you're crazy. I think it means that someone or something is trying to screw you up because you know things and they don't want you to talk about what you know."

"He's visited you before," Tolkien replied, voice dropping back down to empty, devoid of any and all emotion. "He's visited you and he's going to screw you up, too, just like what happened to me. He doesn't like us knowing."

"Tolkien, everything will be fine, I promise—"

"Can you, though? Little Miss Soldier leading all of us into war. I'm standing behind you, always standing behind you, I'm your loyal soldier, but can you promise I'll be fine, that any of us will be fine? Or is it only more empty promises?"

Roxy opened her mouth to respond when there was a knock behind them.

Albus was standing in the doorway, watching them both with an expression of curiosity on his face, looking between his youngest cousin and the man who had gotten his little sister pregnant before unceremoniously agreeing to break up with her. If it had been James up here, punches would have already been swung without a thought, but Albus only waved at them.

"They're finally cutting the cake downstairs if you guys are interested in getting a sliver of a piece." There was an easy grin on his face, a casual slump to his shoulders. "I might stay here, though. Fewer people—fewer _indecent_ people."

Tolkien merely nodded and moved to exit the room, only pausing long enough to clap Albus on the arm and exchange a few words too quietly for Roxy to make out; then he was gone, down the hallway and out of sight.

Albus turned to Roxy, still smiling pleasantly. If it had been nearly anyone else, Roxy might have thought such behaviour was a front to sell her on something—hell, he might be trying to do so, actually. There really was no telling with Albus.

"So I was talking with Miss Longbottom recently," he began and Roxy raised an eyebrow. Al was the only one who wasn't a professor that ever called Tilly 'Miss'. He also (for some strange reason that he wouldn't explain to anyone else) actually did genuinely seem to like Tilly. "She tells me that the two of you have evening hanging out a lot more as of late, growing friendly and such."

He gave her an expectant look when Roxy did not immediately respond.

"I wouldn't say it's all been friendly. I still hate Tilly but...there's a project, a personal project elt's say, that we can't accomplish on our own and since we were both working independently on the same...project, it was smarter to team up regardless of our rocky history."

"'Personal project?'" he repeated, smile widening though not enough to be considered mocking. "Is that what you call breaking into the Department of Mysteries and stealing more than two dozen files from their personal archives? If so, I must be really behind on the slang of today's youth."

"How do you know about that?!"

"Like I said, I talked to Miss Longbottom and she seemed to think I'm the sort of person to whom one can spill all of their secrets to. Perhaps it's my eyes—I've been told they're very inviting." Albus gave her a crooked smile and Roxy couldn't help but crack her own grin at his antics, even as her heart pumped frantically at the thought that Albus might ask for the files or threaten to turn her in to the Ministry.

Albus walked past her and dropped onto one of the couches behind her, settling into his seat as casually as if he owned the place—and, in a way, he kind of did, since this was the Potter's family library and Albus _was_ a Potter.

"You're not going to tell anyone what we did, right, Al? You don't want to see your favourite cousin get tossed in jail, right?"

"'Course not," he replied, tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair. "In fact, I want to help you guys out. You, Tilly, Tolkien, and anyone else in the newest little Scooby Gang."

"I'm sorry?" Roxy, taking a seat across from Al, furrowed her brow in confusion. What was a Scooby?

"That's...probably not something I can explain without making you even more confused." He shook his head. "Too much time spent obsessing over Muggle culture, that's me. But back to the fact that I want to join the little club of ghost hunters you've apparently started. Whatever's going on has already claimed one of my family members; I don't really want to lose anyone else."

"Lucy's not lost. She's still alive, we can still save her and wake her up."

Albus didn't look convinced, giving a small shake of his head. "I have faith in Lucy and in our medical capabilities but I worry that whatever's been going, claiming all of these young people that could have just as easily been me, I can't help but think that it's a force that we cannot comprehend and, therefore, cannot defeat."

Roxy had never seen Albus act this way, almost verging on hopelessness. "If you don't think we can defeat it, then why are you signing up to help? If there's no point in fighting, then why fight at all?" It didn't make any sense to her.

"I'm not saying not to fight." He shook his head, still tapping his fingers on the armrest. His expression was tense, focused—Roxy would almost say he looked angry, though why that would be, she could not say.

"What _do_ you mean, then, if you're not saying we shouldn't fight?"

" _We_ can't fight whatever this is, as shown by the fact that people like Lucy are falling victim to it. But giving up the fight altogether isn't the answer, either. Someone, someday, will come along who can figure out how to win and if we give in and give up _now,_ they'll never even have the chance to figure everything out and save us."

"So we keep fighting for the sake of a future generation, is that it?"

"Just like every generation before us, just doing what we were made to do. It's the whole point of humanity, to fight for infinity and then push past that, beyond it."

Tolkien had mentioned infinity earlier before Albus showed up. Was it possible that these two similar word choices weren't a coincidence? That they were already working together and had chosen to approach Roxy individually to ask the same questions— _are you fighting and can I fight with you?_

Roxy sighed, rubbing her hands over her face. She'd been running near empty for—for almost the last decade, it felt like, but definitely since this year had begun and Roxy just wanted a moment to herself to sit silently and think everything over.

Was this how their parents had felt thirty years ago, steeling themselves to fight against Voldemort and all those Death Eaters, many of whom were classmates or the parents of classmates? What was that like, standing up to fight and knowing that you may never come back?

(And at least, when it had been Voldemort, people knew what they were fighting. Roxy had no clue what she was up against.)

"Are people going to die, Al?" she asked quietly, looking down at her hands.

"I think that's sort of a given when it comes to war, Roxy."

"Yeah, but are they going to die because of _me_? Am _I_ going to lead us all to our deaths if I keep pushing at whatever it is that hurt Lucy and Kieran and all the others?"

Al stood up, walking over to where she was sitting and gave her a hug before dropping to his knees so that they would be at the same height. "Don't be so self-centred, Rox."

She looked up at him, shocked, but Al was smiling teasingly at her before his face grew serious once more.

"It won't be your fault if people die. Like I said, people die in war, that's just what happens, as hard as we will try to limit the number. But for some, death will be inevitable. You just have to prepare yourself for that, okay?"

she leaned into her cousin's chest, determined not to cry. The idea of a war going on during her lifetime—a war _involving_ her _—_ was absolutely terrifying.

"I don't want to lose anyone else," she whispered into Al's shirt, mentally running through the long list of those who _could_ be lost if this unknown dark force truly did rear its ugly head against them all. She thought of those who had already been lost—her father, her brother.

Who else would have to die?

"Hey!"

They both looked up to see some random brunette that Roxy had never met before in her life, standing in the doorway with a kooky grin on her face.

"Did you want something, ma'am?" Albus asked politely, pulling away from Roxy as though she had not just soaked it with tears. A switch had been turned on inside of him, gone from comforting cousin to casually calm.

"Potter's just announced 'bout the baby, you missed i'," replied the brunette, holding onto the doorframe to keep herself steady, her whole demeanor reeking of someone who had had far too much to drink.

"And the gender?"

"A girl. She's havin' a baby girl, how cool is tha'? Maybe I should' have a little baby girl and be jus' like Potter." With that, she dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Albus got to his feet, gently scooping the girl up and moving her to the couch which he had vacated, making sure she wasn't about to throw up. "Perhaps not, I think," he said softly before looking back at Roxy, whose head was spinning.

 _Lily was having a girl?_

"So how about that, huh? I'm going to have a pretty little niece to fight for. I wonder what they'll name her."

 _Lily was having a girl. Merlin save them all._


	37. A day in the life of Tolkien Smith

_2024 - 2025_

He was the youngest of six sons, a tagged-on ending to a perfect eldest brother and two sets of perfect, perfect twins. His parents' marriage was arranged—Da's family was one of the last non-Pureblood families to give up the ancient, outdated tradition—and they had been married at the end of their fifth year.

(Mum was pregnant for the first time before sixth year even began, taking a month off from school to have Tobyn, the eldest, the heir, the pinnacle of absolution that Tolkien would never quite match up to, even if he wanted to.)

Tolkien was—and always had been and probably always would be—the black sheep of his family, born nearly four years after Ezekiel and Emmanuel, an unexpected (and rather unwanted) addition to the Smith, a fact which his parents had never been shy about sharing and which his brothers loved to exploit whenever they could.

For much of his childhood, Tolkien found himself drawn to Aunt Sally's home, finding solace in the noisy mess that was Aunt Sally and her three sons, who were in such stark contrast to the clean, perfect, silence of his own home. He liked Aunt Sally's, who was always ready to greet him with a hug and a plate of biscuits, a willing ear to any of his complaints about his older brothers, his parents, girlfriends. Whatever it was he wanted to talk about, his aunt would listen as enthusiastically as if he were one of her natural born sons.

(Sometimes, Tolkien dreamt that he actually _was_ one of Aunt Sally's sons, the possible twin of her youngest son, Andrew. But that didn't make any sense, because Aunt Sally _loved_ her boys, loved her Slytherin husband, loved her family far too much to ever give up any of them to the coldness of her older brother, Zacharias.)

Tolkien coasted through school, doing just enough work to pass each year, earning the OWLs he'd need to get a steady job somewhere, and then...fell off of the edge somewhere, unsure what to do with himself the last day of his sixth year and Mum and Da kicked him out of the house, insisting that he was finally old enough to take care of himself, never mind that none of his other brothers left before finishing their final year at Hogwarts. Fletcher, the older of the eldest set of twins, had in fact lived in his parents' house until he was almost twenty and Mum and Da never said a word against him, glad to let him hang around for as long as he liked.

With nowhere to go, he'd once again run back to Aunt Sally's, spending the last days of his final summers sharing a room with Andrew and cursing his parents' existence. What had he ever done to deserve this cruelty? It wasn't bloody fucking fair, was it, being kicked out when all his older brothers were more than welcome to stay as long as they like, to be fretted over and told how much they were loved and cared for.

"Don't listen to a word they say, Tolkien. If they don't understand how much you mean, then my brother is a bigger fool than I ever thought," Aunt Sally said, patting his hair in a manner that was supposed to be comforting but only made the seventeen year old feel like he was being treated like a child.

He pushed her away, scowling.

"Sometimes I hate them more than anything. Mum, Da, my brothers. Sometimes I wish I could just slit their throats and be done with it all. They hate me anyway—trying to kill them wouldn't lessen their opinion of me in the slightest. I'd still be their shitty little boy who could never do anything right if he tried."

"Oh, Tolkie," Aunt Sally sighed, giving him a look of pity. She was forty-four, with wavy brown hair and kind blue eyes, but there was exhaustion written on her face as well. Exhaustion from years of arguing with her siblings, years of holding back all the anger she so badly wanted to direct at her twin brother for being such a terrible person to his youngest son.

To keep him from turning his wand on their family, Aunt Sally introduced Tolkien to Mia Itterman and Emily Maccabee, who subsequently introduced Tolkien to every drug, drink, and potion that was known to man.

It was weird to see Maccabee, who was only three years older than Tolkien, but was a mum as well, drinking and dancing like she didn't care about anything at all, least of all her infant daughter or deceased boyfriend. She was too busy enjoying life to care about anyone else and she taught Tolkien how to stop caring as well.

(She also took his virginity over the winter holidays, laughing when he confessed that his previous relationships had never gone beyond necking.)

Tolkien graduated near the bottom of his class—but not _the_ bottom, which is what really mattered—and, though he knew they would not be there, he could not help but look around for his parents, the little boy desperate for love falling into despair when it became obvious that they did not care enough to even see him graduate.

"It's okay, Tolkien," Aunt Sally said, giving him a hug. "Terence and I love you more than enough to make up for my shitty brother. He's always been a big asshole and this only proves it." She smiled up at her youngest nephew, but the anger threatened to bubble up once more.

He nodded, shoulders hunched, his breath catching as he struggled with the injustice of it all. It wasn't fair—but then again, as the eighteen year old now knew, most things weren't fair when you were the youngest of six sons and your parents hated you.

At home (Aunt Sally's home, that was; Tolkien no longer had a place to call his own) he flung himself onto the bed and cried bitter tears that could never have been shed in front of his aunt and cousins. He cried like a little kid would, hot, dripping tears that soaked his pillow and he just kept crying until there were simply no more tears left inside of him.

Then he laid still, face pressed into the pillow until Andrew came in and asked if perhaps Tolkien wanted to set off dungbombs in the toilets or perhaps play a game of "Hunt the Gnome" since it as such a nice day outside.

"Lela is coming over for dinner later," he said, referring to their youngest cousin, who was going to be a sixth year in September and regularly snuck out to say hello to her aunt. "Mum invited her to spend the night."

"Okay," Tolkien replied listlessly, not looking up from his bed so that his voice was muffled by the pillow. "Thanks for telling me, Drew."

"Are you just going to mope up here forever?"

"Yes."

"Asshole." The door shut half a minute later, the sounds of his cousin fading away, leaving Tolkien by himself, as was usual. He was used to being alone by now, with no one who cared about him or what he did with his life.

Later, when he grew hungry and thirsty, Tolkien gave in and went downstairs to eat dinner with the rest of the family. Uncle Terence smiled and directed him towards the empty spot that had been left for Tolkien, between Andrew and Lela.

(So maybe there was _someone_ who cared about him.)

* * *

 _14 March 2026_

Cake. They'd made a _cake_ for him, the scowling nineteen year old that smelled of weed and frustration and cherry-scented soap. Tolkien could not remember the last time that someone had made him cake for his birthday—Mum had given _that_ particular tradition up before he was even of Hogwarts age.

There was a knock on the door roughly an hour into the celebrations that made everyone instinctively freeze; Aunt Sally and Uncle Terence shared a look of panic that Tolkien could not understand, but then the moment passed and Uncle Terence got up to open the door.

"Let me," Aunt Sally said, motioning for him to sit down. "We don't even know who it is. It might be just a muggle salesman or something."

She bustled over to the front door, drawing her wand out from her pocket and holding it up in anticipation. The action made Tolkien wonder why his aunt and uncle were being so on edge over something that was probably not any more serious than a friend stopping to say hello.

(It did not occur to him that all of his aunt and uncle's friends Flooed or owled ahead of time whenever they wanted to visit.)

Aunt Sally opened the door, apparently deciding that whoever was on the other side of it would not be able to successfully kill or disarm her fast enough.

It was Da, scowling, wet, and looking just as pompous as the day he'd Tolkien out of the house nearly two years ago.

"Georgina," Da said, nodding curtly at Aunt Sally.

"Zacharias," she replied, just as cold.

They stared at each other while Tolkien stared down at his knees, wondering how he'd gotten into this situation. Da was the only one who ever called Aunt Sally by her real name, as though he were trying to remind his twin of her more "prestigious" upbringing that she'd thrown out the window in favour of being who _she_ wanted to be.

"I've been told you took over the custody of one of my sons," Da finally blurted after the two siblings had stared at each other for a long while, both attempting to intimidate the other. Theirs had never been the healthiest of relationships, that much was obvious.

"It's true that I've allowed Tolkien into my home ever since he was unceremoniously cast out of his own through the selfishness of his parents." Aunt Sally narrowed her eyes at Da. "Why did you come here? Twenty-six years I've lived in this house and you've never bothered to visit before. And don't try to feed me some crap about you suddenly getting sentimental about the boy or myself. We both know neither of those statements would be true."

"I could never pretend to do such a thing, Georgina. Unlike you, I recognise a mongrel when I see one. In truth, I should have killed that boy the moment that Amanda told me he had been conceived but I hoped, foolishly, that he would turn out like his brothers. How wrong I have been proven. A druggie, bottom of his class, with no future and no money to his name."

"Not that you left him any Galleons to rub together." Aunt Sally gritted her teeth, speaking slowly like one would talk to a very young child that had done something naughty but could not understand why they were being punished. "I'll ask you one more time, brother dear, and then I'll be Flooing the Aurors over. Why did you come here? What is your purpose at my home tonight?"

"I came, in all honesty, to tell you of our eldest brother's passing. Nicholas was attacked by mongrels much like the one you've taken in, robbing him of his money and his nice clothing, yelling that he was a Pureblood of the worst kind." He glared past Aunt Sally to where Tolkien sat, cake covering his face and a jester's hat sitting lopsided on his head. The party no longer felt very festive any more. "Despite the extensively talented Healers and potions that we were able to afford, he did not survive. I suspect at least one of the attackers was a werewolf."

"And I suppose that this is your way of telling us that me and mine aren't welcome at the funeral, is that it?"

Da shook his head. "On the contrary, I am here to invite you to sit in the spot of honour as Nicholas' only sister. I invite you to tell fanciful stories about our childhood and to reminiscence about how great a man our brother was. I only ask that you not bring _him_ with you." He nodded in Tolkien's direction. "It would only ruin the ceremony to have the boy there."

"Then I will have to decline your invitation, brother dear, for as much as I would wish to be there to see Nicholas laid to rest, this is not a condition I will adhere to. To deny his nephew—your _son—_ a spot with the family is to deny me."

She received only a small nod in return; Da had expected this much as an answer. Somehow, that was what stung most of all, that he had known Aunt Sally's answer but came to ask for it all the same, so that he could look down at them smugly in his fulfilled expectations.

"Good-bye then, Georgina." He looked over to the five males gathered around the kitchen table and raised his hand in a small wave. "Terence."

"Zacharias," was the emotionless response and then Da was gone with a slight twist of his body and the crack of Apparition, leaving Aunt Sally to slam the door shut behind him, looking absolutely furious about everything.

"What a prick!" she snapped, stomping back over to the table where Tolkien and his cousins avoided making eye contact with each other; all sense of frivolity and fun had been sucked from the party. "What an absolute fucking cock! How am I even related to him that's what I want to know!"

And then she burst into tears, making Tolkien feel like absolute shite for bringing all of these problems onto his aunt.

Despite her protests, he found a flat above one of the many cafes located in Diagon Alley and moved out only a month later, determined not to let his father get to him.

* * *

 _6 June 2028_

Lily Potter was fucking gorgeous, with long legs, red hair like fire, and intense brown eyes that were always filled with such passion and fury. She was the one who asked Tolkien out, leaning over to kiss him on the mouth as he was attempting to explain to her the difference between stalactites and stalagmites.

"What was that about?" he asked, cheeks going red. More than half a dozen girls had passed since his first night with Emily and here was, still blushing at any pretty little thing that caught his fancy. How embarrassing.

"I like you, Tolkien Smith. You're cute and smart and you know how to have a good time." She was certainly quite sure of herself, that much was obvious.

"You're smart, too, and funny," Tolkien replied, feeling oddly light-headed though he wasn't sure if that could be entirely contributed to Lily's actions. There had been a lot of good things passed around throughout the course of the night and Tolkien wasn't the sort to say no to a good score.

"Am I funny and smart enough to perhaps take out dancing next Saturday, do you think?" she asked with a glint in her eye.

(Tolkien thought that Lily would have made a pretty good Slytherin, in another life, another world, another possibility.)

'Good enough to shag and innit tha' the same thing?" He'd been trying out an accent recently, just one more way of trying to put a degree of separation between him and his family. Though, it was true that the drugs in his system weren't helping to make him any more coherent.

The room was beginning to spin and Tolkien felt like he might throw up all over the pretty girl in front of him.

Lily frowned at Tolkien, the passion in her eyes fading to annoyance. "I shouldn't think they were even close to being the same idea, Tolkien Smith. Perhaps we could do one and then the other, or perhaps neither at all?"

There was a dangerous hint in her voice that Tolkien missed almost entirely, too busy leaning in, wanting to kiss her because he was so intoxicated by her perfume—and the whisper of alcohol on her breath.

"We can do both," he said, chuckling deeply at nothing, and then he kissed her and (for some reason) Lily kissed him back and when they were done kissing, the two headed upstairs to shag (but not dance—at least not in the way Lily wanted) and after that, they fell asleep until someone woke them up hours later (was it really hours?) to kick them out of the room they'd fallen into, which Tolkien was eighty-five percent certain was a bedroom.

(It was the cupboard under the stairs.)

The next night, they went out to a party _together_ and slept _together_ and they were _together_ , which should certainly show Da, who thought the Potters were 'high class, and should show Emily, who wasn't answering Tolkien's owls, and should show anyone who'd ever laughed at Tolkien at any point in his life.

 _He was dating Lily Potter. He was shagging Lily Potter._

(They never did go dancing. Real dancing, that was. They danced plenty enough times in the bed, kissing and touching and laughing.)

* * *

 _29 October 2028_

He was a son, a brother, a nephew, a cousin, an uncle—and now, apparently, he was going to be a father.

Neither of them had known until Lily took a muggle pregnancy test and went to a shop in Diagon Alley that specialised in pregnancy, and now she was already so far along. What if Lily's partying behaviour had already damaged the unborn baby inside of her?

And he didn't even know how to be a dad. He didn't know how to love some tiny little person and make sure they didn't end up screwed in the head. What if he dropped it or hit it or forgot to tell the baby that he loved it enough times so that it felt wanted?

"I'm breaking up with you," Lily said shortly, dry-eyed and dispassionate. She felt nothing, no sadness, no regret, absolutely nothing at all to indicate their relationship meant anything to her at all or ever had.

"Breaking up?" echoed Tolkien, his head spinning. _No, he was the one that usually did the breaking up. It was only ever Emily that had turned away from him first._ "But you're pregnant and I'm the father and who—who—"

"I'm giving the baby up after I have it," she explained. "I'm not sure to _whom_ I'll being giving it up to but I have until almost April to figure things out and I'm going to ask my family to see if perhaps one of them wants to take over the child-rearing."

"You're giving our child up?" Fucking hell, why did his voice have to squeak so badly? He sounded like such a whiny idiot.

Lily shook her head, practically growling with frustration. "It's not _our_ child, don't you get that? In a few month's time, it won't even be _my_ child. But you don't get a say about this, you don't get to tell me what to do with my life just because you've suddenly become sentimental about the fact that you knocked me up and ruined my life."

"I could raise it! I could, and keep our child close so that you could visit whenever you wanted—"

"Tolkien, be serious!" There was laughter in her voice. Laughter directed at him. Tolkien hated being laughed at.

"I _am_ being—"

"You take more drugs in a day than I ever have. You drink, like, all the time. Think about Emily—oh don't deny that you're still hung up on her, we all know you are—but just think about how different she is now, with a kid. That'd be you for the rest of your life, some docile, stay-at-home-all-night, never going out, never drinking old man. I mean, for fuck's sake, you don't even have a job, Tolkien!"

I could get one," he muttered, which only made Lily laugh that much more.

"Doing what, exactly? What skills do you have, Tolkien, that doesn't pertain to selling illegal substances or moping around all day? Face it, you're a loser and you're always going to be one. You shouldn't be trusted near a child, you'd only ever fuck them up like your dad did to you."

It was at that point that he left, unable to take any more of Lily's vicious (but painfully true) statements. She was being cruel, laughing at him, mocking him for things that were, in some cases, not under his control, but Tolkien could not deny anything that Lily had said.

He would never be a dad. He would never be good enough for that. The only thing that Tolkien could do was make things worse. He _was_ a mongrel, just like Da said.

* * *

 _January 2029_

The month of hell. Snatched by faceless—creatures. Those things weren't men. They certainly didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. They _flew_ , actually flew, over land and over an ocean, wings (but _were_ they actually wings?) flapping while Tolkien passed out and woke back up far too many times for him to properly keep track.

When the trio finally stopped flying, the unidentifiable creatures shoved him forward, hitting Tolkien on the back until he fell to the ground, knees hitting the hard dirt and making him gasp from the shock of pain.

"Look up at me, Mr Smith," crooned a voice above him; he looked up to see a tall _thing_ standing before him. It was neither man nor beast, but a bit of both and a bit of nothing at all. "I am the Darkest One, the Eternal One. I have no beginning and no end. I cannot die, nor be defeated. There is nothing that has ever lived nor ever live that could eve begin to understand my powers."

(Tolkien thought the Eternal One sounded rather conceited. And that the Faceless One was probably an infinitely better name.)

"Guards! Escort Mr Smith here to the edge of infinity. I'd like to have this simple mortal send a message back for me to those who would wish to oppose me, and what better way than to have this pathetic waste do it for me? After all, what other good would he serve?"

The creatures from earlier grabbed Tolkien by the arms and dragged him away; they wandered for what felt like days before finally reaching a pool of water that seemed to stretch on eternally. Tolkien looked up at the guards in confusion, wanting to ask what in the hell it was he was looking at, but they merely grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him into the pool.

Thus began the destruction of Tolkien's sanity.

* * *

 _10 February 2029_

"I think he might be crazy." That was Lily Potter, still pretty, still pregnant, scowling at him, her brown eyes showing none of the affection with which she'd held him when they were dating.

"He's not crazy!" Roxanne Weasley insisted, waving her hands. Roxanne Weasley liked to talk a lot, especially with her hands. She never seemed to stop moving, Tolkien thought, watching her jump up from her seat and begin pacing around the room in thought.

The brunette girl spoke up, the one Tolkien didn't know, but who seemed to agree with everything that Roxy had said so far. "Are you sure we can trust him, though?"

"He _was_ a Slytherin," pointed out Matilda Longbottom, pursing her lips. This comment made the nameless girl scowl.

"We've had this conversation before, Longbottom."

"So? Am I not allowed to have an opinion outside of what little Roxy tells me, Bartley? Or are we all supposed to ask 'how high' when she tells us to jump?"

Bartley scowled, turning to look away.

"I don't think the matter at hand here is whether or not Tolkien is crazy, though for whether or not he's to be trusted, I can assuredly vouch for his character. After all, I understand his current situation better than anyone else in this room, besides Tolkien himself, and I promise that he wants to take down the Faceless Ones just as much as we do." Albus Potter gave Tolkien an assuring look, his eyes saying _I'm on your side_.

(Tolkien liked Albus Potter. He was nice and friendly and smart and never laughed or made fun of Tolkien.)

"Fine, whatever," said Lily Potter, not pleased with how things were unfolding. On the other side of the room, Matilda Longbottom also nodded as consent.

" Very well then, Tolkien? Are you going to join us?" Albus Potter held out his hand and grinned at Tolkien, every bit sincere and caring and honest that Tolkien had always associated with the older male.

The others in the room all turned to look at him, their eyes on Tolkien, each wondering what he would do. Would he accept Albus Potter's hand? Would he join their group? Even Tolkien himself was not sure what was the right idea—wasn't sure he was the right person to be joining this group, who were full of such smart, self-assured people. _They_ weren't not pathetic mongrels or wastes of space or crazy. But then Tolkien thought of his Aunt Sally, who always believed in him, no matter what anyone else said. She would never give up on him, never abandon him. Albus was a bit like Aunt Sally, seeing the best in Tolkien.

It made him feel needed. It made him feel _wanted_.

Tolkien took Albus' hand and shook.


	38. To finally grow up

If someone had asked Roxy a year ago if she ever expected to be sitting at a Table with the likes of Tilly Longbottom and Tolkien Smith, she probably would have laughed at how preposterous such an idea sounded. She _hated_ Tilly Longbottom, after all, and didn't think Tolkien was even worth her time to bother with.

And yet, here they all were. Tilly, Tolkien, Jo, Lily, Roxy, Albus, Brennan (who had honestly just invited himself), Aniya, and Desmond.

The last two had entered their circle—still as of yet unnamed (though Albus wanted to call themselves the Faced Ones, a proposal which had been immediately and unanimously turned down)—by invitation of Roxy. The others put up only mild protests, with Brennan insisting that there was no way of telling if the two were trustworthy enough, but Roxy only kept reminding everyone that her co-workers would be important and necessary additions until the rest of the circle gave in.

"But what about Rose?" asked Lily. "Doesn't she have an idea of everything that's happened? And—and she's smart. We could use someone like her in our 'secret inner circle' and I'm going to nominate Rose since Roxy got to bring in her work friends."

Albus pursed his lips in thought. "I'll ask as soon as I can, hopefully before our next meeting, probably just slowly approach the topic and see what she says and how she reacts. Perhaps I could ask Scor, as well? He's just as smart as Rose and has twice the connections, especially when it comes to the, er, _darker_ side of the Wizarding world."

It was decided and their group was completed, with the exception of Rose and Scorpius who had, obviously, not yet been asked.

Perhaps, if anyone ever figured out how to cure Lucy, she would be their final member, but other than that, the circle decided together, there were enough people for now. Too many more and someone might break away, turn them in, finding their loyalties stretched a bit too tight.

(And, after all, no one wanted to let a Peter Pettigrew into their midst.)

* * *

Now, they were all sitting around the table of Tolkien's flat—since he was the only one who lived independently, without danger of someone else walking in and asking what they were doing, huddled around the kitchen table and plotting in low voices.

Though calling this a kitchen was a bit of a stretch, since Tolkien's couch was only two metres from the table at which they were currently sitting and his bed was pushed against the wall furthest away from the door, not even separated from them by a screen. But at least he lived by himself—no parents, no siblings spouses, or room-mates.

To a girl like Roxy, who had never _not_ shared a living space with someone else, this cramped little flat was practically a castle-like, even if there was mold crawling across the ceiling and every floorboard creaked and groaned with the slightest bit of weight. At least Tolkien didn't have to share it with anyone.

"Did you know that today is Valentine's Day?" Lily suddenly brought up, interrupting the silence that had built up while they were eating lunch, taking a short break from discussing their plans.

"Is it?" asked Tilly, looking around like she expected to find a calendar somewhere to confirm Lily's proclamation.

"I've not been single for Valentine's Day since I was a fifth year," said Lily with a hint of shock colouring her words, her eyes darting in Tolkien's direction. " _Never_. And now I'm single and pregnant and in a secret society that's obsessed with ghosts and Faceless Ones or whatever this guy is called."

"That's all on you, sweetheart," muttered Aniya; Lily glared at her, but Aniya shrugged—it wasn't like she was going to be scared off by the likes of Lily Potter when she had already gone up against McGregor and his cronies, who were all much taller and alarming in appearance than Lily was.

Roxy suddenly recalled her last Valentine's Day, the first one she'd ever spent properly, hiding in the darkest corner of The Three Broomsticks, snickering at any of the glum-faced couples that she and Kieran saw who came trudging in with a had covered in pink and white confetti from Madame Puddifoot's/

"Being single myself, i've hardly given to caring if it's Valentine's Day or Guy Fawkes Night or just any random old Tuesday afternoon. In fact, I'd like to take this moment to say that revolutionaries are rarely ever started by those who get distracted by a simple holiday and they certainly, therefore, are hardly ever won, either!" Brennan glared around at them all, clearly realising for the first time what being surrounded by all these people in their late teens and early twenties meant, that he was surrounded by a sea of immaturity.

"Well, aren't you just incredibly rude?" Lily snapped, entirely put out.

Brennan scowled back at Lily. "You're all treating this ike it's some kind of game. 'Oh, let's take our time, let's goof off, let's talk about theholidays unti hell freezes over and kills us all!'" He looked around at them all, eyes blazing. "You waste so much time acting like kids. I bet you they didn't goof around like this when it was _Voldemort_ threatening us all."

Albus leaned forward, opening his mouth to, hopefully, defuse the situation, but Lily quickly cut across her brother.

"You don't know any better than the rest of us—you weren't around back then. Hell, _we_ probably know better than you do, living with actual war heroes all our lives."

"Are you saying something against my parents, Potter?"

"I dunno, did your parents fight at the Battle of Hogwarts, Klein?"

"They're fucking muggleborns, that'd be suicide if they'd gone to fight!"

"My aunt Hermione is a muggleborn and she fought! What's their excuse?"

"Hey!" Everyone turned to stare at Roxy in amazement, watching as she stood up and pressed her hands into the table, looking back and forth between Lily and Brennan. "Nobody gives a shit if your parents never stepped foot in Hogwarts if they led the whole damn army themselves. We aren't here to make judgements or go at each other's throats at all hours of the day. Brennan has a point—we don't have an infinite amount of time to just sit around and insult each other, not when there's some big bad _thing_ coming after the whole wizarding world. No one has any clue what in the hell it is we're meant to be fighting or even how we're supposed to fight it. But squabbling amongst ourselves isn't going to help improve the situation either."

Jo reached under the table to squeeze her hand reassuringly when Roxy finished speaking and fell back into her seat with a heavy sigh.

"I thought you spoke pretty well," Jo whispered as Albus leaned forward to take control of the meeting once more. They had all agreed he was the best person in the group to take charge, as the most level-headed one.

"I think I'll puke if I ever have to do that again," Roxy replied, pressing her hand against her friend's, feeling dizzy. There were a lot of other people here, most of them older than herself. Sure, she could be stand-offish at times, but snapping at her cousin as well as someone who was nearly a decade older than her...well, they both deserved it, behaving like immature little kids when there was still so much that needed to be done.

Creating this circle of people was only the first step in their plan.

Is there really going to be a war, do you think?" Jo asked, looking worried.

"We're already in a war, Jo. They made the first move, attacking us through people like Kieran and Lucy. But we're not going to let them—it—whatever win." Albus looked over to where Roxy and Jo were sitting, a confident look on his face, hands placed firmly on his hips and chest pushed forward to express his certainty.

 _We're already in a war._

The thought made Roxy shiver.

* * *

After the meeting, everyone bustled around, grabbing coats and scarved before heading out to face the harsh cold that was still hanging over London even in mid-February. Winter felt like it was getting longer and longer with every passing year.

"Hey, Rox?" Aniya moved to tap Roxy's shoulder, giving the taller girl a slight smile.

Roxy turned to look at her, studying her co-worker. Though Roxy had put up such a fuss to get Aniya and Desmond incldued, she still had her own doubts about her newest friends, she could not have explained (if prompted to do so) _what_ it was, exactly, that made it just a tad difficult to trust them. Tey were both nice enough, friendly, and helpful—and yet.

 _And yet._

Aniya looked away for a second, deep in thought, before turning back to face Roxy. "Do you know if Trelawney would be able to help Lily at all with her whole possible prophecy skills problem?"

Roxy gawked at Aniya. "How do you know that?" she demanded, pulling Aniya away from everyone else. "I haven't told anyone else about that yet— _anyone._ How did you find out about that fact?"

Aniya looked away again, blushing, but Roxy ony pulled on her arm to get Aniya to look at Roxy once more. Roxy deserved answers, and by Merlin, she was going to get them.

"I was a Hyfflepuff at Hogwarts," Aniya said finally, and in a quiet tone, looking ashamed of herself. "I—I didn't think anyone would recognise my last name, since we're no Malfoy or Goyle, but...my dad made choices he shouldn't have, picked the wrong side, the losing side."

"Your dad was a Death Eater?"

"Yes, he was."

It was weird to look at the short, friendly Aniya and now that she'd come froma Death Eater, the group of extremists that had killed her uncle and so many others in the name of keeping wizarding blood "pure", as though that were even possible.

"But what does that have to do with you knowing about Lily? I don't see the connection."

"Well, being a Death Eater, and not one of high enough profile to pay for his actions, or to warrant the likes of Harry Potter as his defence, my father spent five years in Azkaban as a petty Death Eater criminal before he was finally released. Even now, he has no wand, no access to Portkeys. But he has us—my sisters and I, his only legacy, disgraced as it is. And he taught us the importance of protecting our minds against our enemies, even from a young age."

"You mean—Legilimency? And—and Occlumency? You can do that?" Roxy's voice hitched with incredulit. She'd never met anyone personally who had mastered both, and at such a young age as well.

"He thought we'd be safer this way, blocking ourselves from anyone who might try to invade our minds to find out things about our father. We used to practise for hours at a time, Dad digging into our brains and us trying to keep him out." She looked away, almost embarassed by the memory. "I was seven the first time he practised on me. He used his skils for—nothing big, just catching out on a lie about who'd broken a picture frmae, but...it was so horrifying, having him in my head like that. He did the same thing with my sister, Aleah, when she turned seven two years later, and then again with Anarya. I was already in Hogwarts by that point."

Roxy stared at her friend. How could anyone do such horrible things to a child so young? To take away their privacy, their sense of self like that?

"So that's why you're a Hufflepuff? To distance yourself from your Death Eater father?"

Aniya nodded, frowning as she stared down at her hands in contemplation. "That's why I knew, though, about your having visited Trelawney in the first place. It's—it's gotten to be a habit, and not one that I can always control or stop myself from doing. I just...it's like...I _have_ to see what everyone is thinking."

"Could you—" Roxy almost didn't want to ask, in case that was not how Legilimency worked. "Could you do that to someone who isn't conscious? See into their minds or whatever it is that you actually do?"

"Like Lucy?"

Roxy nodded sheepishly, bracing herself for the crushing 'no' that was surely forming on Aniya's lips at that moment.

"I—I don't really know, to be honest. I've never tried on someone who wasn't conscious. It sort of works if they're asleep—a bit murky and hard to sort through, though, because half of their thoughts and memories are wrapped up in non-sensical dreams, but maybe I could—even if she is in a coma—I should at least _try,_ as both your friend and for more personal interests."

"Hm?"

"Well, imagine it, if I _am_ successful and it turns out that you _can_ see into the minds of coma patients!i mean, just think of all the implications that could have medicaly! Legilimency guiding people who've been out of it for years, directing back into consciousness! How amazing would that be?"

"So you'll help?"

Aniya nodded. "I'm in the group, aren't I? I'm wiling to do anything to improve the world, same as your or Longbottom or Potter or any of the others. Besides, I've seen how you think of Lucy and waking her up should be amongst our top priorities, as far as I'm concerned."

"Good. Maybe now, something will finally be done," said Rose happily, imagining her older cousin finally waking up and telling them everything she knew about the Faceless Ones and all the ghosts. Could this be the solution to getting some answers?

Aniya nodded, looking over her shoulder as Desmond moved closer, beckoning her over to him. "I guess i'll see you at work tomorrow, huh?" she said, waving a hand at Desmond in a 'give me a moment' manner. "Are we all moving in on Saturday orare you and Jo going to be waiting until Monday?"

"Uh, I think she and I settled on around noon on Sunday so there's no rushing around after work lets off, which is what she apparently _wants_ to do, though I know that _I'm_ sure as hell not dragging around a bunch f heavy boxes at seven in the evening after dealing with McGregor and his merry gang of assholes all day."

"Don't forget that you're a witch and can Summon or Banish things and Apparate in and out—we don't want a repeat of the supply cabinet at work, right?" Aniya gave her a teasing smirk, to which Roxy batted at her shoulder, laughing.

"You're bloody hilarious, mate," she said, then noticed Desmond making 'hurry up!' motions once more. "I think Des might be in a hurry for you to go."

"Oh, fine," Aniya replied, letting out a heavy sigh before cracking another smile. "See you tomorrow then, Roxy, and we can talk some more about going to test out our theories on your cousin."

"Alright, bye, Aniya."

"See you."

Now, the only ones left were Roxy, Jo, and Tolkien, who was still sitting in the same spot at the table, tracing patterns with a dull butter knife, looking worlds away and completely oblivious to the two girls still in his home.

Jo looked over at Tolkien with suspicious eyes, not certain that he wasn't about to jump out at one of them with the butter knife.

"Do you suppose that, a year from now, we'll all be completely different people than we are today?" she asked, trying to distract herself. "I mean, think about how much we hated Tilly and now we're working wit her. Lily's going to be mum in less than a month, Albus is getting married this year, you and I are both employed." Jo widened her eyes at Roxy, who only shrugged in response, not really sure what there _was_ to still be said about how different things were.

The only words she could find were, "Grandmum's the one taking charge of the baby, even though she's almost eighty. Lily doesn't even know _how_ to be amum and she's not going to be one anyway, not really, so it's all fine."

it felt somewhat mean to say the words out loud, especially when Tolkien jerked in his seat and dug the knife into the table even harder, a frown spreading across his features and his brow furrowing.

Even Jo looked at Roxy like she'd gone a tad too far, mentioning the fate of the baby in front of Tolkien, though Roxy thought that was a bit unfair. After all, Jo was the one who'd brought Lily up in the first place.

"Is she happy?" Tolkien asked suddenly, his voice little more than a croak. Roxy realised that he had not spoken once during the entire meeting, had not even opened his mouth to say good-bye to anyone as they left.

"Who, Lily?"

Tolkien nodded, the speed of his knife grinding into the table increasing. He wouldn't stop nodding or stabbing into the wood until Roxy was quite certain he'd go right through clear to the other side—or just nod his own head off before then.

Jo and Roxy shot each other worried looks and moved to either side of him; Roxy eased the knife from out of his grasp while Jo reached up to steady his wildly bobbing head.

"Have you been eating properly?" Jo asked, leaning forward to inspect the thinness of his face and the shadows under his eyes. "Are you even sleeping at all?"

Tolkien opened his mouth, but nothing came out; he gulped and tried again. "Whenever I close my eyes, all I can think about is how, in eleven years, my daughter will be getting ready to go to Hogwarts and she won't—" He choked. "—won't even know I exist. I'm worse than my father. At east he gave me a name of my own and raised me until I was of Hogwarts age. I won't even get to give her that much."

Again, Roxy was at a loss for something to say. In all honestly, she did rather agree with what Tolkien said, that he was going to be a worse father for not ever getting to know his daughter, but at the same time, that wasn't really his fault, now was it?

 _Lily_ was the one who decided to give up the baby; _Lily_ was the one who broke up with Tolkien; and _Lily_ was the one who went around and bad-mouthed him every chanced that she got, while Tolkien only sulked and pined after what could have been.

Together, they were miserable, but apart, they were pathetic and petty.

"Lily doesn't hate you, you know that, right Tolkien? She really doesn't, it's just a matter of—of...differing opinions about what she wanted with her life versus what you want with yours." Roxy could hear how fake her words soudned, but she couldn't hate herself for lying, not if it meant that Tolkien would stop whining like a petulant child that had been separated from his favourite toy.

Roxy was of the opinion that both her cousin and her cousin's ex-boyfriend were full of shit and really needed to get over themselves.

(Perhaps what they _really_ needed was a good slap in the face. It may have sounded mean, sure, but it was necessary sometimes, to be mean.)

"Do you think we could ever get back together?" asked Tolkien longingly.

(Merlin, did she ever want to hit him right then.)

Jo looked over at Roxy, raising an eyebrow to ask, 'are you going to tell the truth?'. Roxy shrugged; perhaps the truth was really what Tolkien needed at that exact moment. Sure, she'd just lied about Lily not hating Tolkien, but claiming that Lily still had _feelings_ for him? Now, that was a cold move.

"Really and truthfully, Tolkein?" He nodded and Roxy let out a small puff of air. "No, I dont think she'll ever take you back or even consider the notion. Lily...I dont really know what her issue is, but she's not looking for someone to love her. Lily's only looking for a few months of fun and she just happened to make the mistake of picking you because you're a Slytherin and that makes you seem dark, mysterious, and different. She picked you because she was bored and wanted something new, which you fulfilled, for a time. It was just an error of judgement that went much further than either of you would have ever anticipated."

Roxy pushed the memory of Lily confessing her possible desire to marry Tolkien to the back of her mind. That had been back in July, ages and ages ago in Lily's world, not to mention that she'd been completely high and therefore not responsible for anything she said, being completely out of her bloody mind. Lily had never wanted to marry Tolkien. She simply wasnt the settling down and starting a family kind, no matter how much Grandmum wanted her to be.

"So she'll never love me again?" he asked despondently, reaching forward to snatch the knife out of her hands, but Roxy simply banished the item before he could get ahold of it. "I was just a small fling that went terribly wrong and she's—what? Throwing me to the curb, even after I told her that I loved her more than any other girl in the world? Isn't that what girls want, to be told they're loved and wanted and cherished?"

"Lily's not exactly a normal girl, Tolkien, and that should have been obvious going into your relationship," said Jo admonishingly. "Don't you remember how many times she ended up in the wizarding tabloids with the announcement of a new boyfriend? It should have been pretty clear from the start that Lily wasn't going into this relationship looking for anything permament."

"She said she wanted to marry me, some day," said Tolkien sadly.

Roxy gave him a shocked look. Had it been to more than just herself that Lily had drunkenly rambled about her affections for Tolkien Smith back in July? Just how serious had her feelings actually been only a few months ago?

Jo shook her head. "Be realistic, Tolkien. No offense, but you're just simply not the type of guy most girls want to bring home and introduce to their parents. You're wild, you're a druggie, and you've got no future at all." Roxy slapped her friend's arm, but Jo only rolled her eyes. "What? It's true—we all know that's why Lily won't let him have custordy of her daughter, is because she thinks he'll fall right back into all of the partying crap and hurt their child. It's why she won't take care of the little girl herself, because she doesn't want to give up on the lifestyle, either."

"I could change!" gasped Tolkien desperately, eyes wide. He looked high enough already. "I could stop partying and drinking and smoking and—"

"It wouldn't change a thing, Tolkien. Lily's moved on, the world's moved on, and in total honesty, we've got more important things to focus on than your relationship issues. Like Roxy and Albus were talking about earlier, we've got an impending war on our hands and a custody battle is the least of our worries right now. Just give up on her already, yeah? She's never coming back and you look pathetic when you beg."

Jo stood up, indicating for Roxy to follow, but shrugged when her friend held up a finger. When Jo walked out the front door, Roxy turned to look at Lily's ex-boyfriend, wanting to take back the mean things that Jo had said about him and the mean things that Roxy herself had ever thought about Tolkien. Maybe he didn't deserve all of this crap, especially if he was trying to turn his life around for the better.

He let his head drop into his hands and groaned wildly, a bit like an animal. "I just wanted her to be happy, Roxy! I just wanted her to love me! Why won't she love me?"

"I don't know, Tolkien," was all that Roxy could say, because it was the truth. "I honestly just don't know. Why does anything bad ever happen? I couldn't tell you, I don't know, I'm truly sorry, but I don't. Sometimes things just happen."

Tolkien burst into tears.


	39. Making the first breakthrough

_**This chapter contains references to suicide and racial slurs pertaining to black people. My apologies for both.**_

* * *

It was hard to focus at work when all that Roxy could think about was the fact that, after they both got off for the day, Roxy and Aniya would be visiting St Mungo's to test out their hypothesis on Lucy.

Roxy kept dropping ingredient, losing track of what she was doing, misplacing items, or just mid-stride as a new worry washed over her.

What if it didn't work? What if Lucy couldn't be woken up? What if—what if Lucy _died?_ Roxy wouldn't ever be able to forgive herself if she accidentally played a role in the death of her own cousin—the thought was far too horrifying.

She pushed it to the back of her mind, apologising profusely to the potioneer who was n0ow angrily ranting at her for forgetting wormwood _again._

Roxy wandered back to the storage room, Summoning the correct ingredients and hurrying back in the hopes that no one would complain to her to Starsha; too many mistakes could result in fines or worse, her being fired. She didn't want to lose her job just because she lost focus for a day.

(And Roxy couldn't really afford to take any days off, not when she'd already missed a day back in December after Kieran was attacked. They didn't give the interns a whole lot of holiday time, at least not in the very first year.)

She passed by Aniya, who waved hello, looking just as distracted as Roxy, her mind, too, so many kilometres away to where Lucy was waiting for them to wake her up or fail trying.

Roxy waved back then kept going down the hallway, looking for the man from earlier, who complained that she'd taken too long coming back and why couldn't she just do it right the first time, and you know, back in _his_ day, interns were smart young men who knew how to do their job, not scrappy little half-wit girls who didn't know where they belonged.

"Sorry, sir," Roxy replied through gritted teeth, knowing she'd only make things worse for herself if she talked back.

"You know, back when I was an intern, they didn't let in nasty Slytherins like you and there were certainly no goddamn dirty nig—"

"Mr Cavenaugh!" Rose came up to both of them, a scowl on her face, though she quickly morphed it into a sickly sweet smile when addressing the older male. "Madame Ayala is requesting your presence immediately in her office. Something about commemoration at this year's potioneers' summit?"

"Oh, yes, of course, I'll be right there!" cried Mr Cavenaugh, rushing off.

Rose turned to look at Roxy, the overly fake smile replaced by a more truthfully happy expression as she addressed her younger cousin. "I truly do hate that man," she said pleasantly. "He's quite possibly the dumbest, most bigoted I've ever met, always swaggering around like he's better than everyone else."

"Was he really about to call me a—?"

"Yeah, he was. He calls me a bimbo and ginger-snap and pretty much has some sort of insult for everyone he's ever met, usually a racist one."

He reminded Roy of McGregor, in maybe forty or fifty years. "Why doesn't anyone fire him? He seems pretty terrible to me."

Rose shrugged. "Bureaucracy bullshit, I suppose. I think he's old Hogwarts buddies with the heir to Henrik's and that's the kind of nepotism that leads to terrible people holding onto jobs that they don't really deserve." Rose leaned in, smirking. "He has the lowest numbers of all the most senior members. Madame Ayala actually _does_ want to see him, but less as a reward and more as a berating because of how lazy he is. I think she'd loved to see Cavenaugh sacked."

"Why's that?"

Rose waved a hand and laughed. "They've hated each other for years. Cavenaugh wants Madame Ayala's job and he disregards her opinion about everything; she keeps talking to Mr Henrik Sr about about how under-qualified Cavenaugh is and hates that Mr Henrik Jr swoops in every time to override her."

Roxy stared down the hallway where Cavenaugh had bustled off, wishing that she hadn't apologised to him quite so profusely.

"If I were in charge..." Roxy trailed off and shook her head. There was no point in getting angry about something couldn't fix right then. And besides, there were more important things to do, like preventing the end of the bloody world.

Her cousin made noises of agreement before looking up and down the hallway to make sure no one else was within earshot. She leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, her voice low enough that Roxy had to stretch up just to hear her.

"Al told me about your secret group—your circle, whatever you're calling it. Do you guys really think that something attacked Lucy and now it's coming to kill us all? Is there really going to be some sort of war?"

Roxy couldn't tell if Rose was making fun of her or not; she wasn't smiling or laughing, but she also didn't seem serious about it either, like they were still little kids and Rose was treating this like it was just one more of their childish war games. She didn't actually think ghosts were coming back to visit people, she didn't believe what Albus had said.

This was frustrating for Roxy, who didn't feel like anyone _ever_ took what she said seriously, just because she was the youngest.

"James Potter—the deceased one, I mean, not our cousin—has been visiting dozens of people for several decades now, including myself and Tilly Longbottom. And you know what happened to Lucy and Kieran and all of the other people who are in St Mungo's. This crazy epidemic didn't just pop up out of nowhere for no reason. _Someone_ caused it and it seems like no one's even paying attention to what's going on, like everything's perfect and all those victims are just going to wake up all on their own, totally cured, with no symptoms to speak of."

"Do you honestly believe in all this, though? Lucy and—and Albus...as much as I love that boy, he buys into a lot of wild ideas that don't have any real credibility to them. He's chasing after the next big mystery, to be like his dad. Is it possible none of this is really connected, that it's all in your head?"

"I'm crazy, then? Making it all up?"

Rose shook her head. "That's not what I said, Rox. I'm just saying maybe—maybe Lucy and the others aren't related to this whole mess with James Potter coming back. Maybe...he's not really back, this is just all something Al's dragging you into. He used to do the same thing with Scor, Jenna, and me, making things into a bigger deal than they actually were."

"No!" Roxy was well and truly frustrated; she was beginning to properly understand how Lucy felt, never believed, treated like she was crazy or making things up. And Roxy _hated it._ "I talked to him! He was real, not some fanciful story of Al's or my imagination. He was _real."_

"I didn't mean to offend you—"

"But you're disregarding me!" cried Roxy, not caring that people were staring. "Al only told you about any of this because he thought you'd listen and understand and that you'd _help_ us, not make fun of all of it!"

It was at this that Rose grabbed the younger girl by the shoulders and pulled Roxy into the cubicle in which Rose spent much of her time working.

There was scraps of parchment spellotaped to nearly every possible surface, all scribbled over, some things scratched out or with the edges curled and burnt, blackened to a crisp like they'd been dipped in fire. Various ingredients spread over the desk, a smoking cauldron waited by the chair; bottles lined the shelves and boxes were stacked up to the edges of the wall. What little space was left had been dedicated to memorabilia—pictures of Rose and Hannai; Rose and Al and Scor; Rose and her parents; the whole Weasley brood waving frantically as they squished together; a few of Rose and her Ravenclaw dorm-mates; Rose and her female cousins, with a young, brown Roxy held up in Victoire's arms, standing out against the pale, freckled red of her cousins.

Rose pushed Roxy into her seat and handed her a warm cup of water, letting the girl quietly sit there and glower around at everything that made up all of Rose's office, wondering why she was even in here.

"Listen, Rox, I'm not saying I don't believe you, okay?" Rose said calmly, indicating that Roxy take a sip of water. "I just want to make sure you're making an educated decision here and not just blindly following Albus into his newest scheme. I don't want to see you—or anyone else, for that matter—get hurt because of this."

"Are you two fighting again?" Roxy asked quietly.

The older girl's eyes widened. "Who?"

"You and Albus. You guys were fighting a few months ago, something about plans for his wedding. Grandmum Molly or—or someone, maybe Vic, told me it was because of Al and Scor getting married and you think you're losing all your friends? _Are_ you fighting?"

"N-no..." Rose turned away, cheeks growing pink. "Of course I'm not fighting with Al about the wedding in May. That'd be petty and childish and..." Rose trailed off, looking down with a forlorn expression. "Did James Potter really visit you guys?"

Roxy nodded, confused by the sudden shift in conversation.

"But why are they coming back, I don't understand. It simply just doesn't make any sense to me, the dead coming back to warn the living. _Why?_ "

"But you _do_ believe me when I say that we met him and that we're going to fight in a war very soon?"

She received a small, sad smile in response and then Rose turned to look at her wall of moving photographs. The redhead peeled one off of the wall and handed it to Roxy without saying anything, then settled herself on top of a stack of boxes.

The picture was of Rose, standing in the middle of her friends, one arm wrapped around Albus and the other one around Scorpius. Sitting on the ground was a brunette—Jenna Brownnut-Cotsky—and a blonde—Hannai Jebsen, who was now Rose's wife. They were all in their Hogwarts' uniforms; Hannai, Al, and Jenna in gold and scarlet, Rose and Scor in blue and bronze. Except for Hannai, everyone in the photograph had just graduated and were only a year younger than Roxy was now. Hannai was seventeen and going into her seventh year in September.

Roy looked back up at her older cousin, both eyebrows arched upwards in a question.

"That's the last photo that all five of us were around for. Then it was another year of school for Han and jobs for the rest of us. Jenna couldn't make it to the wedding because she was in Peru on a conference and we haven't all been available to meet up since then." Rose looked down at the photograph sadly. "Everyone told me that leaving Hogwarts meant ending a stage in my life and that'd it never quite be the same again. Merlin, we were so arrogant back then."

Roxy thought of the dorm-mates she had not contacted since last June—Cheyenne, Aleah, Lyric, and even Gwenyth, who had told Roxy to owl at least once a month, if not once a week. When had she last talked to any of them? When had she bothered to contact any of her Hogwarts mates other than Jo?

"Do you know what a war means, Rox? And I mean beyond boring History lessons in Professor Dust's class," Rose said quickly when Roxy opened her mouth to speak. "Do you understand how many people could die or have their whole lives destroyed because of this?"

"I know," Roxy replied in a determined voice. "Dad used to tell me about it, same as Uncle Harry. We both lost the same uncle, we both grew up with the wrecked remains of what happened to our parents and our friends' parents. I know what happens in war."The older girl didn't look much convinced by Roxy's words, so she pushed on, what she was saying tumbling out without any thought."You and I got the exact same speeches from Dust and Mr Creevey and all those other people that fought in the war thirty years ago. We've heard the same stories, I know all about how horrible it is, so you don't have to pester me about it like I'm some dumb kid!"

Rose was silent for a moment longer, contemplative, before she finally responded. "I don't want to seem condescending or like I don't respect your opinion, Rox, but I was nineteen not that long ago, too, and I thought pretty much the same thing, that'd I'd heard all the stories and none of it meant anything, none of it applied to me, because it was all before my time; what did it matter any more, if I'd taken the test and passed the class?"

She shook her head and sighed.

"And then Dominique was dead and Freddie died and Faith was born and then your dad...couldn't take it any more. Losing two Fred's in twenty-five yeas? I was eighteen, remember?" Roxy nodded; she'd been thirteen and a half, speaking through tears at her own funeral's further. "And that was when I realised—the war is over, sure, in the sense that there are no more battles to be fought, but in truth, it never actually ended. Our parents, our aunts and uncles, our friends' parents...they're all still at war with the aftermath of everything that happened to them and their loved ones."

"You don't want to be like that?" Roxy guessed, leaning over to pat a sniffling Rose on the arm. Even now, she refused to grow emotional about her father's and brother's deaths, especially in front of someone else. "You don't want to spend the rest of your life fighting?"

"I don't my _kids_ to grow up that way, watching us suffer through every new day, watching the pain take its toll on us until we all either go crazy or give up on it all. I don't want them to be screwed up like we were."

* * *

They waited for the mediwizards and Healers to clear out, insisting that "everything was fine" and that they "didn't need anyone to watch over" them. A few odd looks were given to the child-like Roxy and Aniya, who sat calmly in chairs on either side of Lucy's bed, but eventually someone connected Roxy's face with the very same person who had visited nearly every single day back in December and left them alone.

It made Roxy feel guilty, realising she hadn't stopped by to check up on Lucy since before Christmas Eve, and almost felt as though everyone could see a big sing around her neck reading 'selfish, doesn't care about anyone but herself'.

She let her leg bounce up and down nervously as a million and one questions ran through her mind. What if this didn't work? What if they only made it worse? What if Lucy died because of what Roxy and Aniya were trying to do to her? What if she died because they chose to do nothing at all instead. What if—what if—what if—

She pinched her leg, letting it go limp and still, nails digging into her palms as Roxy did her best to calm down and regain a sense of control.

"Are you okay?" Aniya asked, looking up at Roxy from the other side of the bed. "You look...flustered...or like you might start screaming."

Roxy nodded absently, barely hearing Aniya's words as she continued to focus on slowing the rhythm of her frantic heart and her ragged breathing. She wasn't going to lose it, not right here, not right now.

"I'm sure she'll be fine, Roxy, no matter what happens. We aren't going to do anything bad to here, it's just sort of like...like taking a stroll and along the way, we wake Lucy up from a lengthy nap, yeah? No damage done." Aniya smiled at her, though the shorter girl wasn't entirely confident of her own abilities, even if she was trying to give off the air that there was nothing that could possibly go wrong.

Roxy looked over to the door, hearing clacking footsteps, but no one came in and she let out a sigh of relief, leaning back into her chair once more. It'd be hard to explain to any mediwizards that came wandering in just _what_ they were doing to this particular patient.

"Should we do it now, before anyone comes back?" she asked quietly.

"Sure, I don't see why not."

They leaned over Lucy and the hospital bed, Aniya closing her eyes, and clasped her hands together in a way that was not entirely unlike the muggle form of praying. It was very odd to see and not more than a little unnerving. Roxy placed her hands over Lucy's clothed stomach, feeling the alarming thinness of the older girl, who was so light now that she was practically skeletal. Cheeks sunken, lips devoid of any colour, her skin hanging off of the bone; like all the other victims, Lucy's body was rejecting any form of nourishment that the St Mungo's staff attempted to administer and she simply continued to silently waste away while everyone and everything fell apart around her in an effort to sustain her life.

"I thought you needed a wand for legilimency," Roxy whispered, not entirely sure why she was keeping her voice down to a slight tone, but also not wanting to break Aniya's concentration by being too loud.

"Don't need to do it with a wand any more," Aniya replied tersely, frowning as she focused intently on the girl in front of her. "Been practising for far too long, so I can do it wandless, in my head." She pressed her hands even more tightly on Lucy's forehead; Aniya's lips pressed together tightly, becoming a straight, thin, firm line.

Roxy fell silent, watching Aniya put all of her energy into entering Lucy's mind; she could feel Lucy's slow heartbeat under her fingers, the sound of organs beginning to shut down due to a lack of proper care.

Aniya groaned, her head jerking back, but she didn't take her clasped hands away, staring at Lucy with a fire in her gaze. "I think I might—"

At that moment, Aniya feel forward, going limp and making Roxy jump in shock as she rushed forward, over Lucy, to grab at her friend. Aniya's eyes were now blank and glassy, emotionless voids empty of any signs of life. She was gone, dragged into the darkest depths of Lucy's mind.

There was nothing that Roxy could do now except watch and wait.

* * *

The first thing that Aniya saw when she opened her eyes was a little girl of maybe eight or nine years. She had reddish-brown hair that reached her shoulder blades and brown eyes that were too big for her round face. There was a smattering of freckles across her cheeks and forehead, little brown flecks across her otherwise pale skin.

This was Lucy Weasley, that much was incredibly obvious. Aniya supposed that made sense—after all, this _was_ Lucy's mind. Who else should she expect to meet here if not Lucy?

"Hello, Lucy Weasley," she said politely, catching the little girl's attention. "My name's Aniya. How are you?"

"Aniya?" Lucy repeated, confused. Even her voice was that of a child; this was such a strange thing to experience after having just seen the twenty-three year old Lucy Weasley that existed in the real world. "Do I know you?"

Aniya shook her head. Okay, mentally state was _also_ that of a little kid's and every child knew about the dangers of talking to someone that you didn't know. "No, you probably don't know me, but my name is Aniya Lamb and I'm a friend of your cousin Roxy. Do you remember your cousin Roxy? She sent me here to talk to you."

Lucy wrinkled her nose. "Roxy? Roxy's a little baby, she doesn't have friends. She's not old enough yet to have friends. That's why everyone says to be nice to her, because she's the youngest one and we need to be her friends for now."

Aniya remembered the first time she'd ever met Lucy, who'd been the sixth year prefect for Hufflepuffs the year that Aniya was sorted. The older girl had given the sleepy cluster of first years a speech about the importance of being kind and friendly to everyone they met while at Hogwarts, no matter who it was. Her words had made Aniya feel welcomed and wanted, even with the memory of her father still hanging over her head.

"Well, I'm from a point where Roxy is older—much older. We're trying to help you, Lucy, because you've been very sick and we need you to wake up and stop being so sick any more." Aniya gave her a friendly smile, hoping to be able to win the little girl's confidence quickly.

"You're from the future?" Lucy asked incredulously.

"I suppose you could think of it that way," Aniya replied with a shrug. "But we need you to wake up, okay, Lucy? Can you do that for me?"

"But I'm not asleep. Look right now, my eyes are open!"

"No, Lucy, you're...dreaming, sort of, if that makes things easier to understand. Right now, this is a ll a dream, okay? And this dream has been going on for a while now, so it's time for the dream to end finally so that you can come back to the real world with the rest of us and help, yeah?"

"You're a silly person," Lucy replied, giggling. And then, before Aniya could properly react, the little girl ran off down a suddenly appearing stretch of road over which dark trees grew, with long, gnarled branches. Lucy quickly disappeared, too far gone for Aniya to spot her.

She ran after the girl, yelling, "Hey! Wait—come back!"

Aniya sprinted down the road, feeling the pull of branches at her hair, the tug at her clothes. They were alive, clawing at her face, hurling wooden insults with every step that she took. She cried out, wondering when this mad attack would ever end so she could find Lucy and then—

Her pounding steps slowed as she hit the soft grass of a clearing. Aniya stopped, looking around at the large circle of peaceful earth, surrounded on all sides by normal, non-murderous trees.

"Lucy?" she called out, spinning in a circle to see if the girl was hiding anywhere. "Lucy? Are you here?" She spun around again, but there was no sight of the eight year old anywhere.

"You're back..." said a glum voice, and she looked down to see a much older version of the little girl from before. This was the Lucy that Aniya had met as a first year, though she didn't look anything like the happy, bubbly girl who'd told them to be friends with everyone.

This version of Lucy was dead, emotionally at least, frowning listlessly up at Aniya without the spark of energy that she so easily remembered the older girl using to speak with them on that very first night.

'Yes, it's me again," Aniya replied, sitting down in the grass next to Lucy; she was now shorter than the redhead, who wasn't very tall to begin with herself, and was also hunched over into a ball. "Lucy, did you hear me when I said you need to wake up? I wasn't joking about that. It's very important that you do, or else bad things will happen. Will you please come with me?"

"Why?"

"Why is it important? Because we n _eed_ you, Lucy. You've known about the ghosts longer than anyone else in our group and you're the only person we can ask right now who was attacked by the Faceless One or whatever that dark creature is calling itself. So you need to wake up and help us to keep the wizarding world alive, do you hear me?"

"Why am I so important?"

"I just said why!" Aniya cried angrily, then fell away when she noticed the hurt expression on Lucy's face. "Can't you please just help us? Roxy's counting on me to bring you back and she'll be really upset if I fail."

"Roxy's a little kid," Lucy replied, frowning again. "She's too little to be fighting. Roxy can't even do magic yet, she's a child."

"Roxy is a nineteen year old girl, actually. As I've said before, this isn't real, what you see around you. You're sleeping, dreaming."

The older girl turned away, curling into herself and rolling onto her side as she let out a sigh. "You're lying now. She's a little kid. Uncle George is taking her to the train tomorrow, just like how Molly's bringing me since Mum and Dad are too busy with work, as usual."

"Lucy, a few minutes ago, you were an eighteen year old girl and now you're sixteen. This is a _dream_ , listen to me."

"Liar." Lucy began sinking into the earth like it was made up of quicksand that only affected her, and soon disappeared, leaving Aniya to beat her fists on the ground and demand that Lucy come back and deal with her issues.

Then the scenery changed again, less subtly than the first time, changing suddenly from an empty field to inside, with Aniya sitting on the couch of a very neatly-made flat that showed signs of a recent and very thorough cleaning. Aniya had no idea where she was—Lucy's home, maybe? Though this did not seem much like the sort of place that she would occupy.

"Have you come to laugh?" asked Lucy, her hair a stringy, unwashed mess, her cheeks stained pink from crying. She was painfully thin and her clothes were covered in various stains from old meals and a lack of a good shower in several days. Lucy was in complete contrast to the intense level of cleanliness that surrounded them both. "Come to mock me, too?"

"I'm not here to mock you," Aniya replied, but it was not her voice that spoke. The sound of her words were male, strained with worry and concern. "Molly and I are only worried about you. That's why she asked me to come over, to talk to you because you won't listen whenever she tries to. Your sister and I are just making sure you're okay."

"And why should I bother listening, Louis? Letting you talk to me about the 'natural grieving process' isn't going to bring my baby back."

Aniya gasped, though Louis did not—apparently, this was a Weasley family secret, one of the few that had managed to not leave the members of the family. Lucy Weasley _lost_ a baby? _The Daily Prophet_ would have had a frenzy at even the very notion of such a thing.

"I'm sorry about the baby, Lucy, I really am, but letting yourself fall apart isn't going to bring him back either. Do you want to be the second cousin that we lose in less than a year? Do you think that Grandmum could handle losing anyone else? Domi's dead, Freddie's dead, Uncle George never leaves his room any more—please don't be that selfish. It isn't like you."

"Arsehole," Lucy spat at him, but whatever Louis was going to say back was lost in rolling fog, the sound of someone screaming coming from underneath her feet. When everything cleared away, Aniya was face to face with the same brown-haired girl who was currently lying unconscious in a bed at St Mungo's.

 _This_ was the Lucy she was looking for.

"You're Roxy's friend?" Lucy asked, voice hoarse, eyes tiredly drooping. "You're the one who's helping her out?" Aniya nodded eagerly, hoping that, after all this time, they were finally getting somewhere now. "How'd you even get in my head?" Lucy mumbled sleepily.

"Um, legilimency."

Lucy nodded as though this were the most reasonable thing she'd ever heard. "Do you guys really need my help to get ride of the Faceless One?" She tilted her head, eyelids fluttering like she might go back to sleep at any moment.

"Yes, we really do."

Lucy sighed. She'd known this was coming—it was finally time to stop napping, as nice as such a thing sounded at that exact moment. "Very well, Roxy's friend. Time to wake up."

And with that, Aniya—the one in the real world—was thrown backwards, her head just nearly missing the bedpost behind her as she and her chair were sent flying and clattered to the ground on the other side of the room.

Roxy cried out in shock, looking between her older cousin and her friend with an expression of shock and amazement.

For, as slowly as she was moving, at last, Lucy Weasley was waking up.


	40. Uncovering old friends and new secrets

Roxy stepped out into the hallway long enough to flag down a passing Healer, who looked over at the wide-eyed Roxy with a confused expression, listening quietly while the girl babbled on about Lucy Weasley waking up from her coma and they needed a Healer right away to check on her.

Eventually, the bewildered Healer caught on and sent out a Patronus to inform the team that was observing the coma patients that one of the girls had finally woken up all on her own, after months of tests performed on them.

"Well, it wasn't _actually_ all on her own," interrupted Roxy, though the Healer was hardly listening any more as she bustled into the room excitedly. "My friend Aniya is an accomplished Legilimens and she was helping me test a theory on my cousin since we thought that comas are a bit like sleeping if you look at it abstractly."

"Okay, little girl," the Healer replied absently, waving her hands in Roxy's direction and shooing her back out to the hallway. "It's time to let the adults handle the situation now, thanks."

Roxy glared at the Healer, who shut the door in her face and then she turned to kick at the wall. How dare she be treated like some little kid?! She was nineteen bloody years old and just because she was shorter than the average person, that stupid woman had kicked her out!

As she waited, more Healers and a full team of mediwizards came rushing down the hallway, none of them even looking in Roxy's direction as they hurried into the ward hosting lucy. She was ignored, invisible. As the door shut once more in her face, Roxy remembered that Aniya was still inside. Had anyone even noticed her yet or were they far too busy crowding around Lucy, probably making her feel self-conscious and afraid?

She kicked at the wall again, ignoring the grumbling complaints of Elda Djinn's portrait as her trainer made arhythmic thumps against the concrete barrier. Lucy was going to be absolutely scared without a familiar face to help her understand everything that had happened since she slipped into a coma three months ago.

Someone a few rooms down opened their door and stuck their head into the hallway, glaring in her direction when they spotted Roxy ramming her foot into the wall.

"I'll call security on you, little lady, if you don't cut that out!" the man called out, but Roxy only made a rude gesture in his direction, gave the wall one more hefty kick before heading upstairs to where they kept emergency owls.

No doubt it wouldn't cross anyone's mind to contact Molly or Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey for at least another few hours, as they'd all be too busy huddled around Lucy's bed, poking and prodding her, interrogating the older girl about everything that she could remember since November. So it was up to Roxy to tell Lucy's family instead.

 _Uncle Percy,_

 _Lucy has woken up. Please come as quickly as you can._

— _Roxy_

 _Aunt Audrey,_

 _Lucy has woken up. Please come as quickly as you can._

— _Roxy_

 _Molly,_

 _We woke Lucy up today. I can't give you all the details on paper, in case this falls into the wrong hands, but she should be fine. The Healers kicked me out of the ward, so I'm sending an owl to you and your parents. I'd recommend coming as soon as possible, for Lucy's sake. I suspect she'll be quite frightened, having no one around that she knows. I'll try to get back in to see her though my odds aren't very good right now._

 _Love,_

 _Roxy_

She sent off each of the letters with three separate owls, watching them fly off in the direction of the Ministry, where all three family members worked. Uncle Percy and Aunt Audrey would probably Floo or Apparate over to St Mungo's after work—after all, it was the beginning of campaign season and Uncle Percy most likely wasn't even in his office—but Molly would drop everything in a heartbeat to be with her sister. Lucy _always_ came before any job or employer.

Of all the Weasley siblings, Molly and Lucy were probably the closest, even when compared to James, Albus, and Lily, who would often get into fights or ice each other out for weeks at a time over silly things.

Roxy was right, though—not even fifteen minutes after she'd sent out the owl, Molly came rushing through the doors of St Mungo's, walking hurriedly over to where the nineteen year old had settled herself in the waiting area. A large grin was spread across Molly's face as she grabbed Roxy around the waist and spun the smaller girl around in a circle.

"Oh, Roxy, I'm so glad you were here today of all days! Who knows when anyone would have ever thought to tell me about Lucy; it probably wouldn't have been for several hours, but you're so thoughtful and clever, I sometimes wonder if you oughtn't to have been sorted into Hufflepuff with me instead."

She hugged Roxy tightly, pressing all of the air out of her cousin's chest before putting the girl back down on the floor, still grinning wildly with happiness.

"Have you told my mum and dad yet? Are they coming?" Molly asked eagerly. "If not, they'll want to know."

Roxy rubbed at her aching chest though she couldn't help but be suckered in by Molly's excessive happiness. "I sent owls to them at the same time as your's, so they've probably already gotten them or will very soon, which you'd know if you looked any further into the message I sent you past _Lucy's awake._ "

Molly nodded, looking over Roxy's shoulder at an older Healer with long, blonde hair and an exhausted expression on her face as she made her way into the waiting area.

"Madame Elliot?" Molly called, catching the older woman's attention and waving her over with a big smile on her face when the woman headed in their direction.

"Ms Weasley, how nice to see you again," said Madame Elliot, shaking Molly's and Roxy's hands. "How's Peter? How is work going?"

Molly made an offhand statement about things being how they usually were before waving her hand in Roxy's direction. "Oh, Madame, I forgot. This is my youngest cousin, whom you might remember from twenty years ago this September. Roxy, this is Madame Healer Clarisse Elliot, who is the Head Healer here at St Mungo's as well as having the highest honour of delivering all twelve of the Weasley grandchildren and overseeing the delivery of both of Vic's boys."

Madame Elliot nodded happily. "And Miss Lily has also asked me to continue on the tradition with her delivery next month. She's having a girl if I recall correctly?"

Molly said, "Yeah, I think," then grabbed both Madame Elliot and Roxy by the hand and pushed them forward, towards the staircase that led up to the floor where Lucy's hospital ward was located, explaining the current situation to the older woman, who listened intently to what Molly was saying, offering a comment here and there about Lucy's health. Roxy followed them silently, wondering if she'd ever get the chance to jump into the conversation and tell them both just what had happened.

They walked down the hallway where the room was located, stopping just outside the door, where a dazed and dizzy Aniya was slumped against the wall, chatting in a rambling manner with the portrait of Elda Djinn, who scowled over at Roxy when she noticed the three females arrive.

"Rude li'le girl, trying t' break my precious hosp'al. No respec' amongs' you young people any more, none a' all," she grumbled to herself, but no one was paying the portrait any attention now.

Roxy helped Aniya to her feet, looking her friend over to make sure that she hadn't suffered too terribly from what had occurred in the room. "Are you okay?" she asked, feeling Aniya lean heavily in her arms.

"I—I think so," the other girl said weakly before nodding in the direction of the closed door. "They kicked me out. The Healers apparently only care about their newest test subject—Lucy was crying earlier, I could hear her though I'm not sure what about, or what it is they're doing to her in there that's got her so upset."

"They're hurting my sister?" Molly demanded, a fierce and frightening look crossing her face. Roxy would hate to be anyone who pissed the twenty-seven year old off, especially when it concerned Lucy.

Aniya nodded, her eyes trailing emptily towards the floor as she fell against Roxy once more, her legs giving out underneath her. Roxy let out a groan, doing her best to hold up the full weight of the other girl as she patted Aniya on the cheek to get her to focus once more.

Finally, Aniya seemed to gain control again, holding herself upright in Roxy's grip and opened her mouth to speak in an exhausted, trembling voice. "Whatever they're doing to her, no one's being very nice about it."

As though to confirm that statement, there was a frightened yelping noise form inside, then the sound of low crying that was muffled by several other voices arguing over Lucy.

"Here," said Madame Elliot, her mouth going tight. "I'll go talk to them, get them to back off of your sister. After all, my employees _should_ be smart enough not to stress out a recently awoken coma patient of all things. I thought I'd have them trained better than this." She frowned before disappearing inside of the hospital room, leaving Molly, Roxy, and Aniya to stand outside.

"Help me sit down, Rox," Aniya said and they slowly lowered her back to the floor, letting the girl lean against the wall and take several heavy breaths as she looked up at her friend and gave a nervous grin. "I guess this means that our theories have some ground to them, huh?"

Roxy laughed weakly in response but fell silent once more when there was the sound of yelling on the other side of the door that made them all wince.

'What theory is this, exactly?" asked Molly curiously, looking at the two teenage girls. She was clearly trying to block out the yelling.

Roxy and Aniya exchanged looks, silently debating whether or not to explain everything to Molly right there in the hallway. Roxy raised her eyebrows and nodded agreeingly—she had wanted to Molly anyway, as well as the St Mungo's staff in the hope that they would use this method to help rest of the coma patients _and_ get some conclusive answers from them as well.

After a moment's thought, Aniya let out another deep breath and bobbed her head up and down, mumbling, "Why not?" under her breath.

"Aniya is a Legilimens," Roxy explained but put her hands up when Molly opened her mouth to speak. "Trust me, I've seen her first hand, I know it's true, I believe her entirely. But she's the one who woke Lucy up—Aniya went into Lucy's thoughts and memories and convinced her to wake up when no one else was able to do anything for so long."

Her older cousin stared at Aniya, who blushed and hid her face behind her hands in embarrassment. Molly ran her eyes up and down the small teenager with an incredulous expression on her face.

" _You're_ an experienced Legilimens?" she asked with disbelief, staring at Aniya like she was a creature from a wholly different planet.

Aniya nodded mutely, her whole face hidden now inside of her shirt.

" _You_? Of—Roxy, I have to ask, where in the hell do you find these people? Do you realise how few people are fully trained in Legilimency—how long it takes to learn and be entirely practised and skilled in Legilimency? Like, it's probably less than one percent of Britain's wizarding population who could even make such a claim as this. And you've been working since, what, August or September with some tiny little girl that fits just that description?" Molly shook her head and let out a burst of nervous laughter.

Against the wall, Aniya was looking up nervously, staring at Molly as she discerned whether or not Molly was taking them seriously or was just mocking them both.

She leaned forward to explain. "My dad trained my sisters and I ever since we were little girls though I'm the only one who ever got the full hang of it. Aleah and Anarya—they're only sixteen and thirteen, they wouldn't have quite mastered Legilimency as well as I have, but they're younger and there would be time still for them to practise and be as good as me in a few year's time."

"Why did he teach you how to break into the minds of others? What sane person would train a bunch of kids to do something like that?"

The nervous behaviour was gone, replaced by a steely look that made the older girl back away from Aniya, despite being both larger and physically stronger. "Who says my father is a sane man? He was in Azkaban before I was born and he was thrown back in there two years ago for a variety of crimes, amongst them attempting to turn his own children into weapons."

"So he's a criminal then?"

Aniya shrugged. "He was always an arse with highly questionable ideas of what was wrong and what was right. But the Ministry is the one who decided he was a criminal, as well as being the ones who decided that, if anyone was going to use my sisters as human weapons, it would be _them_ and not a random madman."

"You're lying. The Ministry would never weaponise children. I _work_ at the Ministry, I'm pretty sure I would have found out by now if that was ever a thing going on."

"That or they don't want you to know the truth. I don't know anyone who's _personally_ involved, but people like my sisters and I—and people like your cousin Lily—have been disappearing for years, usually as kids, always ending up in the hands of Ministry officials and their parents detained for various charges. They almost kidnapped me back on my sixteenth birthday, but my mother got me away before they could. She wasn't...wasn't so lucky when it came to my sisters. We haven't seen them in nearly three years. I don't even know if they're still alive or what the big government conspiracy is that anyone would want us for."

Molly shook her head fiercely, arms crossed over her chest as she waited for Aniya to stop speaking. "I don't believe you. This—this is the _Ministry_ we're talking about. _My_ Ministry. I've worked there since I was eighteen, they can't just— _hurt_ people like this, not when there are people like Uncle Harry or my dad there. Hell, Kingsley wouldn't allow something like this to take place. It's a lie. You're lying."

"Then you're an idiot," Aniya snapped. "We have ghosts crossing over the barriers between life and death, gifted children are disappeared and you're calling me a liar? Are you really that dumb or are you the sort of woman who lets her husband or boyfriend hit her and then make a new excuse for him every time that someone asks about the bruises?"

"How dare you—"

"Do you think they said the same sort of things leading up to the Pureblood Wars? Is that what your dad said, maybe? 'Not _my_ Ministry, it could never happen here!' how long will it be before you're the one overseeing the executions of children and teenagers or helping to prep them for war against some unknown enemy?"

Both Molly and Aniya were red in the face, staring the other down with their most fearsome glare that they could manage.

Jus then, Aniya reeled back, head hitting the wall since she had nowhere else to go, eyes widening in shock and something worse—almost fear? She hid her face in her hands and muttered, "No, no, it isn't true, it isn't!"

Roxy dropped to the floor, putting her hands on Aniya's shoulders and giving the girl a concerned look, tilting her head sideways to catch Aniya's eye.

"What's wrong?" she asked quietly.

"Your cousin—!" Aniya choked out through her tears. "Your cousin and those other people in the Department of Mysteries! They've been working on the Veil, I can see it in her head right now because she's worried that something they did to it might be what's unleashed ghosts into the world or that creature that attacked Lucy and the others. She thinks that might be why they'd be taking kids now—because they opened the Veil!"

Roxy whirled around, staring up at Molly, who nodded in embarrassment, silently confessing that Aniya's tearful exclamations were true, as terrible as it all was.

"We didn't know, Rox. We still really don't know what our experiments have done. Stuff, weird stuff, has been happening without explanation, but if it's connected to what we did, none of the results were intentional, I swear!"

"How long?" Roxy asked, closing her eyes and sighing.

"What?"

"How long have you and your stupid co-workers been digging around in something that no one can understand? How long have you been condemning us all to a painful death just to satisfy your own curiosities?"

"It—it started in 2017, back before I joined—most of the original team is gone, quit is what they told us, but no one ever gave a reason why or explained why we couldn't contact any of the old members. We all just assumed—I man, it's hard work, after all, and then Tarving died and they closed up the records on ghosts and started pressuring us into investigating closer, searching more intently, and yet never told us what it was, exactly, that we were meant to be looking for."

Molly was wholly devastated now, crying just as much as Aniya, while Roxy looked between the two of them in horror.

"Do you really think that you might have let out whatever it is that attacked Lucy and the other victims? Was it really from the inside of the Veil?"

Her older cousin nodded and let out a small wail that finally got the attention of someone from inside Elda Djinn's ward.

"Roxy, Molly—is everything okay out here?" It was Ms Kosaraju, who shared a bemused look with Roxy, nodded at the sobbing Molly and the top of Aniya's head since the rest of her face was obscured by her jumper.

"Sorry," Roxy replied uncomfortably, shrugging. "I think everyone's just sort of having a moment right now. Is Lucy okay, though?"

The practising Healer nodded slowly, then transfigured a few spare quills dug from her pocket into tissues, which she handed to Molly and Aniya. The two wiped off their tears, looking mortified at having been caught crying in such a public area, especially in front of Miss Kosaraju, who had an expression on her face that indicated that the whole situation made her very uncomfortable.

"Well, if the 'moment' is over, Madame Elliot says that it's fine to let the three of you in to see Lucy since I'm sure that's what you've been waiting on, yeah?"

She held the door open as Molly rushed inside, scrubbing at her face with her sleeves; Roxy helped Aniya back to her feet and they headed inside, but before Roxy had gotten fully through the doorway, Miss Kosaraju held out an arm to stop her. The Healer looked down at Roxy for a moment before leaning in to whisper in her ear.

"I know about Miss Lamb. I know what she did. Could she—" Miss Kosaraju gave her a hope look. "That is, could she do it again, with the others? I wouldn't tell anyone, none of the other Healers or medistaff would even have to know. I'd let everyone assume it was a total miracle or that our constant testing woke her up."

Roxy nodded, glad to have someone on her and Aniya's side finally. "Thank you for everything," she whispered back.

Miss Kosaraju only nodded silently, dropping her arm to let Roxy inside to see her cousin once more.

* * *

Afterwards, when all of the fussy Healers and mediwizards had cleared out, Lucy began to make noises that were anything other than the terrified, unintelligible shrieks she'd been emitting until the adults had been dispelled from the room.

She sighed and accepted the cup of water that Molly Summoned for her, looking around wearily like a Healer might jump out at her at any moment and start asking questions again. Lucy trembled so much that Molly had to hold the water for her, one hand behind her head to help the girl take small sips.

"I'm glad you're awake," said Molly after Lucy drank her fill. "I think everyone's relieved, really."

Lucy nodded listlessly, stretching out her hand to tap the pads of Molly's fingers with the tips of her own. "It's so noisy now, being awake." Her voice was small and soft, barely more than a whisper. "I didn't remember everything being so noisy before. People make a lot of noise. Too much noise." Lucy tapped Molly's fingers again and shifted in her bed.

"I'm sorry if they scared you, Lu, but I don't think they meant to overwhelm you. Sometimes people react without thinking about the consequences. They didn't know they were frightening you, at least not initially."

Lucy nodded again, then leaned against her sister's chest. On the other side of the bed, Aniya and Roxy waited for the two to finish. So far, neither of the younger girls had spoken, sitting patiently while Lucy calmed down.

Finally, Lucy pulled away from Molly and turned in the direction of them, giving Roxy a weak smile and reaching out to take hold her hand, Lucy's thumb rubbing on the middle of Roxy's palm.

"You guys made me wake up again?"

They nodded; Lucy sighed, leaning back into her pillows.

"How? When a whole team of Healers couldn't?"

Aniya went red in the face once more as Roxy explained their theory and how they'd tested it on Lucy to get her to wake up. And then she explained that Miss Kosaraju knew, too, and wanted Aniya to do the same thing with the rest of the coma patients, to wake them up and save their lives and even get answers to just _what_ it was that attacked all of themselves.

The other three girls listened closely, mostly silently, though one of them would occasionally jump in and ask a question of her, or give a suggestion.

When Roxy had finished speaking, she looked over at Lucy, one last question still burning inside of her, needing to be asked more than anything else that they had discussed; the question that was, in truth, the whole reason that they were here.

"Who attacked you, Lucy? Your story can be confirmed when the others wake up, but your's is the first. What attacked you?"

The redhead blinked slowly, eyes scanning the stitching of her blankets as though it might answer the question for her, silently written out in her lap so that she would not have to say a word. But the blankets would give up nothing, so Lucy sighed, head slowly rising so that she met Roxy's curious gaze.

"We were at Sunday dinner. That—that's the last thing I really, properly remember about being conscious. All of us were stuffed around the table while Lily explained that she was pregnant and didn't want to be because it ruined her lifestyle." Lucy's hands balled up and her eyes narrowed. "I was listening to her talk, growing angry because I felt like she was throwing away something so precious and then...I don't properly know how to explain it, but it was a bit like a heavy weight settled inside of me, weighing me down so heavily that my very molecules were aching from the effort of holding myself up. And then I was gone, swallowed up by this heavyweight—the only thing left was emptiness, the end of everything. I couldn't see, couldn't hear, yet I knew that there was something in front of me if only I could move fast enough to catch up with it. I ran until I couldn't run any longer and then the thing turned around to face me. I screamed as it reached out to touch me and it told me that I could never wake up again or bad things would happen. I blinked and in the next moment, I was alone in a field by myself, able to see. Well, I was alone until _she_ showed up." Lucy nodded in Aniya's direction. "And now I'm here and I'm conscious, so I guess he was lying about not waking up."

"So it—the thing—the er,—"

"We've been calling it the Faceless One, for reasons that I think, should be obvious," said Roxy.

Molly furrowed her brow in thought. "Not as threatening as Voldemort, but alright. So the Faceless One didn't actually bother to tell you the _why_ of any of this? No discernible reason for—for possessing you, I guess, and making you use Dark Magic on yourself? I just can't find a logical explanation for all of it."

"I few knew anything about the other victims," muttered Lucy, waving a hand around the room at all the other still unconscious young adults, "perhaps we'd be able to establish a pattern."

"But Uncle Harry and a whole team of Aurors worked to find some sort of pattern, make some sort of connection between all the known victims. Even if you throw in Lorcan, there's no definitive way to link every single one of you, as far as I can tell."

Roxy received a surprised look from Molly, who opened her mouth to ask, but Roxy only shook her head and explained, "It was during Faith's fifth birthday party, when everyone else was scattered throughout the house James—er, I mean Teddy came in and helped me wrestle away his wand in time."

There were several minutes of silence as the four of them sat quietly and thought to themselves.

It was Lucy who finally broke the silence. "Did anyone do an in-depth, I dunno, a character study on all of us? Interview close family and friends, look into their mental health background, their opinions, quirks, ideals? I mean, how far did they look into the history of all seven of the victims? How much dod the Aurors know about what _we_ know?"

"I think they interviewed family, asked about a history of depression, drug use, suicide and the like," said Molly quickly, ticking off the investigation points on her fingers. "There was a range of responses, from severely suicidal to insanely happy; medicated for depression to never even broken a bone; more drugs in their system in their system in a day than Tolkien Smith in his whole life to absolutely innocent, never even seen a cigarette. Like we said, there was nothing conclusive that anyone could draw from to explain why seven entirely different people would suddenly turn their own wands on themselves."

Roxy leaned forward. "Actually, there was _one_ thing that links you guys at all."

"Which was?"

"Every single victim was less than twenty-five years old but were all, at least, seventeen. Lorcan would have been the youngest of all the victims. Also, no two people who were attacked were the same age, either."

Lucy sighed, loke she'd expected to hear as much from them. "But I bet if we were to wake up the others and bring Lorcan in here, then ask everyone—and I mean _ask_ them, no ducking or avoiding the question simply because it's difficult—if they had ever seen a ghost in their life, the one response you would get across the board is a resounding yes."

"You think the connection is the ability to see ghosts?" asked Molly incredulously. "I'm meeting teenage Legilimens who claim they escaped a government kidnapping and now I'm being told that my little sister really _can_ see ghosts—and even crazier, that there are more people out there just like her?"

"I've seen one. A ghost, I mean," Roxy confessed, to which Molly gave her an aghast look. "James Potter the first. I've seen him and so has Tilly and Tolkien and even Faith appears to be able to see them. And—and Lily might have Seer's blood in her."

Now Molly was totally pale like she might faint at any moment. "And the government is after people like that, as well as some faceless creature attacking anyone that can see it?"

"Yep!" said Aniya much more cheerily than she had the first time they went over this in the hallway, leaning across the bed to pat Molly on the arm. "Do you believe us about everything now, Molly? The world's falling apart. Fun, isn't it?"


	41. The Circle

_**The following chapters make indication or direct acknowledgement to instances of suicide.**_

* * *

For the next week and a half, right up until the beginning of March, Aniya and Roxy headed up to St Mungo's every single day to work on waking the other six victims, making sure that the only Healer in the room while they worked was Miss Kosaraju.

The other Healers kept asking how it was that people who had been wasting away for almost three months were suddenly waking up, though no one had (thankfully) yet connected the revitalizations to Aniya's presence in the ward.

They went down the list from the eldest to the youngest, though when Aniya asked Roxy for her reasoning behind the decision, Roxy remained quiet. Aniya worked for hours to wake up people that Roxy had never met before but upon whom she was basing her entire future in the hopes that they had the answers to her plethora of questions.

Noah Mueller, Schuyler Gresens, Victoria Diaz, Ethan Aimes, Lindsey Eunice—and, lastly, after several hours of watching Aniya with her hands clasped over his forehead, Kieran was awakened for the first time since November. He moved slowly, opening and closing his mouth to taste the air and then he turned his head to the left, eyes falling on—

"Roxy?" His voice was hoarse, dry, and he coughed for nearly a minute after croaking out that singular syllable like it'd taken all his energy just to force it out.

Roxy ducked her head, embarrassed to see her ex-boyfriend once more when the last thing she'd ever said to him was that they'd be better off _not_ together. "Hey, Kieran," she mumbled, giving him a small wave. "I'm glad you're awake now. Life's been rather boring without you around."

"Yeah?"

She could see the glimmer of hope in his eyes and felt even worse, because Roxy knew that she didn't love Kieran in the same way that he loved her, as much as she enjoyed his companionship. And, more importantly, she would never love him in that way again, at least not enough to agree to rekindle their relationship.

"Well, it's certainly been weird not seeing you around at, er, parties and such," Roxy amended awkwardly, looking away once more as her cheeks burned.

After that initial hello, things got a tad easier; Aniya and Roxy ran through the same questions with Kieran as they'd asked every other victim, asking if he remembered what had happened leading up to his attack, if he'd noticed or met anyone strange, if he believed in ghosts or had perhaps ever encountered one during his life.

The answers were eerily similar in their details—a dark weight settling inside each victim, making it hard to breathe, and then the sensation of just being... _gone_ , pulled away from friends and family and made to chase a stranger, who, upon turning around, revealed itself to a be a cold-voiced, faceless entity that cruelly told them they'd never wake up again, or else face dire consequences for trying.

All six victims were initially reluctant to admit that, yes, they'd seen ghosts before, as children and teenagers and even now as adults. 'It was embarrassing' became the group's opinion, admitting that they were observing spectres which they had all been told for years no longer existed, but the things they'd seen _had_ been ghosts, no matter what anyone else said.

It was even stranger to hear Kieran admit that he'd been noticing ghosts all around him since he was four or five because he'd never once mentioned it, though Roxy supposed that, by age eleven, he'd learned not to bring up the fact in front of other people.

But the most common person that the six victims recalled seeing, of all possible ghosts?

James blood Potter.

Schuyler, Kieran, and Ethan were all able to name him personally, explaining that James Potter had introduced himself and informed them that they were part of something very big, very important, and probably very dangerous.

The other three—Noah, Victoria, and Lindsey—described James as looking "a bit like Albus Potter or his dad, but with wrongly coloured eyes". Even those three were not the least bit surprised to hear that they'd met James Potter himself, and mentioned that other ghosts had told them that there was a big plan that would some day involve them.

"It was always weird during Hogwarts because I'd have classes with Albus and I'd see him looking so much like this dead man that I'd known since I was a little girl." Schuyler blinked away a tear and sniffled. "Sorry, but I feel bad for the Potters, you know? Like, I know their own grandfather better than they do; I've met him when they never can. It isn't fair. It just isn't _fair._ "

And lastly, each victim was quietly informed about the Circle—the group had given up entirely on giving it an actual name and 'the Circle' was as easy a name as anything else. When asked if they wanted to join, their names having been run by the rest of the Circle beforehand.

* * *

"I thought we weren't letting anyone else _in_ ," snapped Brennan, annoyed at this newest addition to the group.

"That was before the only other people besides Tolkien who's met the Faceless One started waking up," Tilly replied with a roll of her eyes. "We need them to help us and inviting them to join the Circle is the only way to secure that help. Otherwise, they might give up and deny everything that happened the second they step out of St Mungo's and have to face the real world again."

Roxy quietly added, "Especially when the real world denies that something so important as ghostly visits and demonic attacks ever occurred or even _could_ occur to them and anyone else like them."

* * *

The victims agreed immediately to join the Circle, with the exception of Ethan; he insisted that he needed a few days thought to consider whether or not he was willing to jump into a war against something so dark as the creature that had overtaken his body back in December.

The next morning, Roxy woke to find and owl from Miss Kosaraju, sloppily written and with multiple parts crossed out entirely. The whole thing was tear-stained as she explained that the early morning nurse had gone in to check on everyone and found Ethan dead—overdosed on stolen sleeping potions.

Hours of work trying to resuscitate him had been unsuccessful and his family was, as of the writing of her letter, being contacted about his passing.

Roxy, upon finishing reading through the letter, stumbled into the bathroom and vomited profusely, emptying the contents of her stomach over and over; then she laid on the cold stone floor and wondered if it had been _her_ that pushed him too far by waking up him up in the first place.

After Roxy was confident that she wasn't going to throw up again, she stood up and wandered into the kitchen, noting absently that the calendar had turned itself to the first of March, Uncle Ron's birthday.

Uncle Ron was forty-nine today; Ethan Aimes was dead at nearly twenty-one years of age.

Roxy made herself a cup of coffee.

She sat silently, occasionally taking a sip of coffee, and wrote out a letter to Albus before magically copying it and sending a version off to every member of the Circle with the exception of those still at St Mungo with the use of a spell that Molly had taught her that could make the letters behave much like those that the Ministry used to send messages.

When Jo and Aniya woke up, she told them in quiet tones what had happened and that they would be Flooing to St Mungo's for an emergency meeting. Aniya had to duck into the bathroom to keep the other two girls from seeing her cry, but Jo only sat down and Summoned all the items necessary to make herself a bowl of cereal.

"S'not like we knew the guy terribly well. He was older, from a different house—hell, I don't think either of us knew he even existed until last week. No point in getting all weepy over a near stranger." She took a bite breakfast and swallowed. "'Course I'm not saying it doesn't bother me that he's dead but I'm noting to be overly emotional over it like I would be if, say, you died or someone close like that."

Roxy shrugged and finished the remains of her coffee, watching Albus' owl Cyrus fly through the kitchen window and land on the counter top, letting out a small hoot to announce his presence.

She took the letter from him, reading through Al's hurried scrawl, working out the actual information from his babbling about losing Ethan, who _had_ , apparently, in fact been a friend of Lily's and Hugo's during Hogwarts, as well as being one of Hugo's flatmates.

"What's he say?" asked Jo when Roxy finally let out a heavy sigh and set the letter behind her, giving Cyrus a treat before he took off once more.

"Essentially the same thing that I did, that we need to go to St Mungo's and have an emergency meeting about Ethan and what happened. We need to make sure that nothing like this is going to happen to anyone else and that means discussing it as a group so that we know what to expect in the future."

"We're going back there? To the room where he died?" Aniya asked, her voice hitching. She'd stepped out of the bathroom in time for the end of Roxy's statement and now looked between the two girls sitting at the table with a face full of revulsion and horror.

"We don't have much of a choice, now do we?" said Jo without emotion. "The other six people who _aren't_ dead still haven't been released from St Mungo's yet and that means we're sort of limited on places to meet if we want to involve everyone that we've let into the Circle."

"But he _died_ there," Aniya stressed, frowning intently. "Wouldn't they have moved everyone to another room or—I mean, he _died_ in there!"

"As you've said plenty of times already," Jo replied with a roll of her eyes. "But that changes absolutely nothing about that fact that we're meeting at St Mungo's in that particular room, so get over it."

Jo might as well have slapped Aniya in the face considering how affronted she appeared, physically distancing herself from Jo, whose only response was to take another big bite of her cereal.

"You're heartless, Joanna Bartley."

"Ever call me Joanna again and you'll see just how heartless I can really be, little Miss Hufflepuff of too many feelings."

Roxy turned around to make herself another cup of coffee. She had an idea already of how well the day was going to end up and a second cup of coffee would make it at least a little more tolerable.

* * *

"How in the _hell_ were you ever placed in bloody Hufflepuff of all houses?" Lindsey demanded, arms crossed over her chest as she glared at Brennan from her hospital bed. "You are probably the rudest, most self-serving person I've ever met. I'm disgusted to know that you and I share the same house—you absolutely _besmirch_ the great name of Helga Hufflepuff!"

Brennan flipped the girl off and continued talking, not giving the slightest damn that nearly everyone else in the room was glaring at him by this point.

"I don't think we can merely trust Kosaraju at her word that she's working in our favour. I mean, she might be preparing to turn all of us in for conspiring against the government—and the _only_ reason she knows about any of this is because someone let the little girl loose to talk about things that were meant to be kept secret." He turned to give Roxy a look.

"You're just jealous that we figured something out without your help," she replied coolly. "And the only reason you don't want Miss Kosaraju in the Circle is because she's older and you hate the idea of being told what to do by a woman."

"Bitch," he spat at her.

Roxy smirked, retorting, "Carefully note that you aren't denying what I said, Brennan, and that's because we all know it to be true."

"Er, I hope you guys are aware I'm not interested in telling anyone what to do just because I'm older than everyone else here," said Miss Kosaraju awkwardly, looking around at all the teenagers and twenty-somethings sitting in the Djinn ward. "Also you _can_ just call me Meera from now on since that _is_ my actual first name. Not 'Miss'." She winked in Roxy's direction.

"Okay, if we're done being immature or openly trying to get everyone in this room to hate you, as easy as that is, can we actually discuss the matter that brought us all here today? A boy—no, a man—that we invited to join our group is now dead, by his own hand." Albus glanced around the room, managing to make eye contact with every person before he spoke again. "We failed Ethan Aimes. We failed our group. Now I know most of us hardly knew Ethan before now and his death may not seem like much, but I want everyone here to know that Ethan is not the only person we're going to lose in our attempts to fight the entity that we refer to as the Faceless One. I wish this weren't true, but at least a few of us _will_ die. So really think about whether or not you want to risk that fate. I'll let you ponder on that, talk it over with someone else here if you want, but if you stay in the Circle, you stay until we either win or you die. There is no changing your mind later on because, by then, it will be too late."

Silence overtook the members of the Circle; they avoided looking at one another as each contemplated whether or not they were willing to truly dance with death while knowing that said dance might not end in their favour.

Roxy crossed her arms, staring down at her feet as she tapped them arrhythmically on the floor. Even though she herself was one of the people who'd started the Circle, even Roxy couldn't help but think that maybe it'd be smarter if she just got up and left all of this behind.

No more ghosts, no more prophecies, no more wondering what fresh conspiracies each new day would throw into her lap and demand that she do something about it.

But no one got up or gave in; no one said that they would rather choose sanity over staving off the end of the world. The Slytherins in the room exchanged especially wary glances—after all, they were defying their very nature by staying—but Roxy, Jo, Tolkien, and Kieran stayed put, knowing that, at least this once, self-preservation was not the smartest or best choice to make.

Albus gave them all a weak smile. He'd been expecting, at least, one or two people to back out and come to the realisation that they didn't belong here, such as Brennan, but when everyone continued to sit there quietly and look at him, the twenty-two year old took a deep breath and tried his hardest to calm the pounding of his heart as he realised that all these people were officially looking for him to lead the group.

Roxy could see the glint of panic in Al's eyes. As much as he was always trying to live up to his dad, _actually_ standing in that same position must be absolutely nerve-wracking.

She jumped to her feet, giving Al the most encouraging grin that she could manage. "Okay, so there are..." Roxy looked around the room quickly, "nineteen of us. Nineteen Circle members. Everyone in her has been entrusted with a secret—that ghosts are coming back—but along with them is something far more deadly, something that few have encountered and even less understand."

Lindsey and Victoria exchanged uneasy glances.

"Like Al said earlier, some of us are going to die. It may seem callous or cold to be so blunt, but this isn't some adventure for little kids. We aren't characters in a story, we're...well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I still feel like child most days, especially when some boss or co-worker talks down to me. It doesn't help that I look like a kid."

That garnered a small laugh or two from the others but it was mostly eerily quiet except for the sound of her own voice.

"But this _thing_ that we're facing? It _isn't_ a little kid. It, presumably, isn't even human. And no one knows where it cam from." She glanced briefly at Lucy. "But we do know that it isn't our friend, plain and simple. If we want to even have a chance of defeating this thing, we're going to first have to know everything we can. So, if everyone's okay with this, Albus and I have come up with a plan. Lucy and Lorcan will work alongside Aniya and the other victims to pull out as much information as they can remember—perhaps uncover hidden memories. Brennan, if you perhaps look through the archives for any more information on ghosts and things of that nature. Al, Rose, and Scorpius will be best suited to looking around Uncle Harry's office for information on 'skilled' children. And Tilly, Jo, and I are going to visit a few people who might know something."

"What about me?" Lily asked. "Or Tolkien. You didn't give him anything to do, either."

Albus stepped forward once more, staring down his sister, who responded by scowling at him. "Lily, you're nearly eight months pregnant. It isn't safe for you to be out hunting down information or interrogating people. If something happened to you and the baby..." He trailed off, the incomplete sentence holding more power than if he'd finished.

"And Tolkien?" Lily narrowed her eyes.

"Lily—"

"Albus Severus Potter, don't you dare say what I think you're about to say. Don't you blood dare, I swear I will hex you."

"Lily, can you be realistic about this, please—"

"I swear to Morgana that I'll hex you, Albus, ,I don't care if there are a bunch of other people to stop me, if you're about to say that I'm safer with Tolkien than anywhere else just because Aniya's got everyone convinced that the Ministry is going after people, I will absolutely hex you right into next week."

Albus looked away wordlessly, his cheeks flaming, so Lily turned her fierce gaze to Roxy.

"Tell my brother how dumb that is. Tell him that sticking me into the same tiny little space as my ex-boyfriend is not only insane, it's downright inhumane. I won't do it, you understand that, right, Roxy? You're on my side, aren't you? Aren't you?"

Roxy put her hands up defensively. This had been one of the things written in Albus' letter and as unfair as the idea sounded, Roxy couldn't deny that Lily would be safer away from the very famous Potter people where much of the public was aware she lived.

No, it wasn't fair to Lily _or_ Tolkien, but living with an ex-boyfriend, especially one with whom the break-up had not been entirely amicable, was the safest decision that they could think of to keep Lily and her unborn daughter safe from harm.

"Are you really siding with _him_?!" Lily shrieked before spinning around the ward in the hopes that she might find an ally.

No one would look her in the eyes. Though most of the Circle hadn't been aware of this idea until Albus brought it up, they knew it would be the lesser of two evils.

"Lily, just say yes, okay?" murmured Rose, patting her cousin on the back. "It'll only be until you give birth. You can make it just a month, can't you? It's only—only five weeks, yeah? Only five weeks and you can go back to being the selfish little strop that you've always been, free from any obligations or stipulations, as usual."

Lily shook her head, insisting, "I'm _not_ selfish," but then gave up and fell back into her seat, sending a fearsome glare in Tolkien's direction. He appeared just as equally excited to be sharing a living space with a girl that totally hated him.

Albus nodded wearily before turning back to the rest of the group, quickly replacing the friendly smile that Roxy knew he only used when frustrated.

"Very well. Today's the first and you guys are being released on..." He looked towards Meera, who quickly checked the papers in her lap to find the right information.

"The fifth."

"Alright, so in four days. Hm..." He ran his hands through his hair; Tilly Longbottom suddenly looked at him with widened eyes, though Albus didn't notice. "I think maybe a month to gather as much research as we can? Is that enough time for everyone or do we need more? Meera and her group can meet, er..."

"At my house after their release," she supplied.

"Okay, so meet there or write down anything that might come back to you in between sessions. And the rest of us will do _our_ jobs, gather information, talk to people. Yeah," Albus said, nodding thoughtfully. "I think a month is good. We can meet again on the first of Apr—"

He stopped, turning slightly so that Roxy was in his line of sight; she was wringing her hands, looking up at her cousin with a pleading expression.

"The second," he amended with a slight cough, ignoring the non-Weasley family members looks of confusion. "We'll meet again on the second of April, that's what I meant to say. Is everyone okay with that?" He refused puzzled agreement from the majority of the Circle and a grateful smile from Roxy. "Alight, if there's nothing more to be decided or debated, and if we all understand the rules, then I guess this is the end of the meeting. I will see all of you in a month."

The next few minutes was spent clattering around, saying good-bye to each other, agreeing on a time to get together for their individual projects, or just chatting casually; several people asked Lily about her daughter's name, which made the girl bright up once more as she explained that the name was a secret, grinning gleefully when Aniya and Lindsey tried to coax her into the giving up the information.

"You'd think my sister were six rather than twenty-one with the way she behaves sometimes," said Albus with a small chuckle. "Pregnancy certainly her a world of good, though, in at least one way. Makes her the centre of attention right up until the delivery. Almost has me wondering if she won't pull some sort of stunt at the last minute and declare that she _will_ be keeping the baby."

"Do you know its name?" asked Roxy, her curiosity piqued. Though she wasn't a big fan of babies in general—they were noisy and smell—everyone's excitement had swept her up.

Al shook his head, laughing. "She's not talking about it to me or James, nor to Mum and Dad, and not even to Grandmum, which is understandably driving her absolutely batty. If she doesn't know the name, what's she supposed to stitch onto all the new baby clothes or the blanket?"

"Oh, the horror," Roxy replied dryly. Then she leaned in and gave Albus a tight hug, whispering, "thank you for changing the date. I really appreciate that."

Her cousins cheeks burned as he patted her on the back somewhat awkwardly. "You know you and Aunt Ange aren't alone on this, right?" he asked, putting his hands on her shoulder and pulling away so that he could scrutinise Roxy's face. "If you two want to talk about anything, you've got a whole network of family willing to listen."

"I know," she mumbled, ducking her head.

Albus looked her over a moment longer before nodding and pulling Roxy into one more hug; then, hearing Lily impatiently call his name, he kissed Roxy lightly on the forehead and headed over to where his sister was not so patiently waiting, along with Albus' fiancé.

"Ready to go?" asked Jo, appearing suddenly at Roxy's elbow. She gave her friend a crooked grin before noticing the sadness in Roxy's eyes. "You okay?"

Roxy blinked, shaking away the thoughts that had started creeping back into her head, as they usually did when someone mentioned April. "I'm fine," she told Jo assuringly, waving her hands when the other girl didn't look convinced. "Where's Aniya? I wouldn't say no to getting a bite to eat before we head home."

Jo nodded, glancing sceptically at Roxy, though she decided not to push the issue. "I'm a bit peckish, too. Let's go."

* * *

He grinned to himself, pleased to see the humans that had gathered. They had no idea—not even the slightest clue—what he was here to do. Humans, especially the living ones, always thought they were so clever, that a little hard work and 'gumption' was all that was needed to take down any enemy.

 _A few of us will die_? He snorted, amused by the confidence of the little girl's words. They would _all_ be dead by the time that he was done, along with millions of others. Anyone who fought against him, anyone who got in his way—dead in an instant, carelessly discarded like the garbage they were.

He hated humans, hated their stink and the sound of their chittering, chattering languages. They crawled over this planet, claiming ownership over things that could never be theirs. They fought over petty things, not realising that their lives were so insignificantly short that putting effort into _anything_ was entirely senseless, purposeless.

Yes, he would very much enjoy killing off the human race. He couldn't wait to wipe them all off of the face of this miserable planet full of wasted time and broken dreams.

But little Roxy Weasley—oh, did that particular human ever make him laugh. Of all the living creatures he'd ever encountered, she was quite possibly the most entertaining of them all. And it was because she tried so hard, struggled so much to keep afloat even as her ship was sinking faster and faster every year. She, better than the rest, understood just how much of a danger he was to the world.

He laughed again, wondering if maybe he ought to make another visit to Roxy Weasley before James Potter could get to her again.

 _That_ particular creature was seriously getting on his nerves. James Potter had not been working as long as he, yet stupid humans were flocking to him in the hopes that he would rescue them all form the Big Bad that was coming to swallow them up. James Potter was trying to ruin his plans, running underfoot like a cockroach that refused to be squashed.

But that was no problem. The only thing that was needed to squash a particularly hardy bug was a particularly large shoe. He would squash James Potter soon enough.

He would squash them all.


	42. Why Roxy isn't allowed to be nostalgic

The month of March passed by very quickly for Roxy; between work and interviewing people, it felt like she wasn't given any time to rest. They talked to the Librarian, they talked to members of Molly's team working on the Veil, they talked to the adult daughter of Erick Tarving—and even managed to hunt down Tarving's sister, who initially refused to speak at all.

If she wasn't out recording every scrap of information given to her, Roxy was stuck at Henrik's, ignoring whatever crap McGregor said to her and striving to stay focused and look good for Starsha.

Between their three incomes, the flat was well paid for and was being slowly decorated bit by bit. Some days, Roxy would walk in and wonder if she hadn't accidentally entered the wrong place, seeing a brand new couch sitting in the middle of the floor that hadn't been there when she left for work that morning. Their few free weekends were spent moving around furniture and finding things that make the flat look nicer.

But the important thing was that she was keeping busy, which allowed her to stay far away from thinking about the first of April and really staying away from anything that made Roxy stop and think. If she started thinking, then everything would fall apart around her, so instead, she _acted_. Moving endlessly, never stopping, never slowing, only pausing long enough for a bite of food or a few hours rest before throwing herself back into work.

She would not slow down. She would not fall apart. Slytherins were strong, cold, controlled. She would _not_ fall apart.

So she threw herself into working instead, happy any time that someone gave her a new assignment or asked for her help. Roxy even offered to help out at the joke shop and spent the greater part of a weekend helping Uncle Ron move merchandise from the Hogsmeade location to the new store that was opening up in Pottersville, an all-wizarding neighbourhood that had popped up in the last few names—aptly named after Uncle Harry.

Roxy stopped by Tolkien's flat whenever she could find a spare moment, giving Lily updates about what was happening as well as the letters that could not be directly addressed to her in case someone found out where she was.

Lily would sigh every time and do her best to coax Roxy into helping her sneak out for a fun night, but all the younger girl would do in response was point to Lily's stomach, which was now so swollen that the redhead could no longer see her own legs, a fact which she regularly conveyed to Roxy as often as possible.

Sleeping was the hardest part because that meant slowing down long enough to rest, which allowed her thoughts to turn to darker subjects. She began playing white noise on the radio and taking Sleeping Draughts nearly every single night.

Most importantly, though, she coped. It was painful and exhausting but she pushed through anyway, always putting on her best and brightest smile, telling anyone who dared ask that she was perfectly fine but thank you for asking.

* * *

The next Circle meeting was held at Al and Scor's flat in London, all nineteen of them sitting as comfortably as possible on couches and stools and Transfigured wooden chairs.

Each leader of the varying projects presented their information, sharing discovering, explaining the problems they'd run into, and addressing concerning or questions that anyone else brought up.

The general theme of their discoveries was that there simply wasn't much to discover—someone or something was blocking their access to information.

Those from St Mungo's were, after a month of struggling through their memories with Aniya, only able to give a little bit of new information about their attacker—that he was definitely not human, that he hated humanity and wished to see them all dead, and that he had the power to turn both the living and the dead to his side as weapons against his enemies, having tried to turn each of them whenever they were attacked.

"Not even a name, though?" asked Al, stress making his voice rise in pitch so that it cracked painfully. "Not an explanation for why he attacked you guys or why he wasn't able to successfully turn or convert you or whatever?"

Meera shook her head, wringing her hands in her lap as she explained. "I think he very intentionally selects what information they can or cannot have access to, like he's playing some sort of game with us that we don't even know the rules to."

"And what rules he _does_ want us to know is that he absolutely despise us, although it's not clear _why_ and that he';s also very confident that we aren't even the slightest threat to him, although it's also not clear _how_ it is that he's so much more powerful." Lindsey looked like she might throw up and buried her face in Victoria's shoulder after she finished speaking.

Then Roxy stood up and told everyone about the people they'd talked to—the Librarian, Mella and Emily Tarving, employees from the DoM, and a few others to whom she, Jo, and Tilly had been directed.

The Librarian had been as vague and unhelpful as the first time Roxy had gone to see him, offering mostly inconclusive half-statements that made very little sense at all or else warned them about not being able to understand 'the bigger picture' while also refusing to explain just _what_ 'the bigger picture' was supposed to even be.

Mella Tarving hadn't wanted to speak to them at all, nearly managing to slam the door in their faces, but Jo stuck her foot in the way before it could fully close.

"Just hear us out," Jo said insistently, pushing against the door until it was wide enough to fit through. "It might not be easy for you, but we need to know the truth. I think we're owed at least that much, aren't we? Don't we deserve to know the truth about what your brother died for all those years ago?"

Mella had eventually let them in, but it was Emily who answered their questions, explaining anything that she could remember or that she'd been told about her father, who'd passed away when she was seventeen.

"They told me it was a suicide, that he'd only grown exhausted from endlessly depressing stories about crazy drunken people who claimed they saw ghosts. That's why his job got shut down afterwards, because no one wanted to risk taking over a dead man's job. I—I didn't really know what to believe back then. I mean, Dad _was_ always anxious and depressed, rambling to me over dinner about some of the people he'd talked to, the stories he'd heard. But I would never have thought—my dad wasn't _that_ bad off, psychologically, but I didn't even think to look further at first and by the time I did, the Ministry had hushed everything up and they paid for me to stay quiet about it all...so I did. Er, up until now, that is."

"So the Ministry lied about his death?" Brennan asked when Roxy finished recapping the conversation, eyebrows raised. "Why, though? What benefit do they have to lie about a dead man?"

Roxy shrugged. "But it _wasn't_ a suicide, that's for sure. You saw his final notes on the James Potter folder. He _didn't_ kill himself, but something did—and whatever it was, the government obviously doesn't want that information getting out to the public.

"Wait," said Meera, leaning closer, "did you say that Judith Pucey was the one who signed his death certificate, the one you found?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Judith was a friend of my aunt's. I remember she complained about being unfairly let go, what, nearly five years ago? Something about a conflict between her and her superiors so they let her go without even a warning because she refused to drop the subject."

"Could we talk to her? Judith Pucey, I mean. Is she available and willing to give us answers about everything?"

Meera shook her head, frowning. "Judith moved away around Christmas of that year. Or, that's what her ex-husband told my aunt. He said she'd moved to Germany, though they found her body in Belgium the following spring, buried underneath lost luggage in a muggle airport."

"And the government—"

"Ruled it a suicide, claiming that she was angry about losing her job, angry about her divorce, angry just because she didn't like how life was going."

Albus ran his hands through his hair, letting out a heavy sigh. "That's two people now who were directly connected to the ghost files, specifically that of my own grandfather at one point and both ended up dead—ruled suicide by our own government. That isn't a coincidence. There's no way in hell that could ever possibly be a coincidence. They're _hiding_ something from the public."

"But why?" Brennan asked again, then put up his hands defensively when he received a few glares. "I just mean that we need to think this through. What could our Ministry have to benefit from covering up deaths and the return of ghosts—or possibly just reappearances, since it rather sounds like they never truly left. It's important that we figure that out first so we can understand just how far our _human deterers_ are willing to go just keep us from learning any more about our _inhuman deterers_ , don't you agree?"

"That is probably the most sensible thing I've ever heard you say, Brennan," Roxy muttered, to which Brennan only shrugged non-committally.

Albus talked next, and his brief explanation was quite possibly the most troubling of all as he passed around charmed copies of the paperwork he'd stolen off of a desk in his father's workplace.

Written out very clearly was a long list of names along with birth dates—all categorised as either 'detained', 'removed', or 'to be detained', which was not only ominous but absolutely horrifying as they read over the names.

It made her shiver to see how long the list was—and the outcome of many of its occupants.

 _Kaiden Steinberg May 9, 2012 detained_

 _Lovell Von Brandt August 27, 2024 detained_

 _Oce'ane Hustovi January 7, 1998 removed_

 _Miguel Guerrero September 11, 2003 to be detained_

 _Lindsey Eunice March 11, 2009 to be detained_

 _Sanni Jakeman June 9, 2021 detained_

 _Melania Abbey April 22, 2017 removed_

 _Soraya Bristol August 3, 2019 detained_

 _Arsenios Osborne January 16, 2026 detained_

 _Shripati Shrader February 11, 1995 detained_

 _Myranda Weekes January 30, 2015 removed_

 _Lily Potter February 3, 2008 to be detained_

 _Marta Avery August 7, 2001 to be detained_

 _August Batts July 1, 2017 detained_

 _Thanasis Dickenson May 13, 2028 detained_

 _Apollinariya Paquet March 20, 1999 removed_

 _Schulyer Gresens May 4, 2006 to be detained_

 _Theofanis Tolbert April 7, 1994 removed_

 _Hestor Ingersson June 18, 2000 detained_

 _Edme Bray May 29, 1993 detained_

 _Victoria Diaz October 30, 2007 to be detained_

 _Noah Muller June 13, 2004 to be detained_

 _Modest Schuchandt November 13, 2014 removed_

 _Tades Kempf December 6, 2020 removed_

 _Johanna Lordanova September 7, 2023 removed_

 _Lorcan Scamander August 20, 201 to be detained_

 _Lucy Weasley July 6, 2005 to be detained_

 _Sloane Tracey June 8, 1997 detained_

 _Eris Grey July 15, 2025 detained_

 _Victor McNeil February 17, 2002 to be detained_

 _Asher Whittle May 28, 2019 to be detained_

 _Anne Sauveterre October 12, 2022 detained_

 _Amy Puera June 3, 2027 removed_

 _Labhmin Pekkaren July 2, 1996 removed_

 _Rosaline Salomon July 17, 2023 removed_

 _Kieran Kanallakan January 8, 2010 to be detained_

Roxy covered her mouth with her hands, feeling like she might be sick. The majority of the names on the list belonged to children, many of them not even old enough to attend Hogwarts yet.

"That was only group one," Albus said morosely, holding up a stack of more pages—ten or fifteen, at least. "Aniya, your name is somewhere in here, along with your sisters and more than a hundred other people, as well as my own sister's."

"Are they—"

"Anarya is detained," replied Albus, his voice slowed as he struggled to keep his voice steady. "Aleah...Aleah has been removed. She's—they're—I'm so sorry."

Aniya buried her face in her hands' Roxy, Lucy, and Lindsey moved to comfort her as the girl sobbed heavily, practically collapsing in on herself.

Albus set the rest of the stack on the table in front of him, running his hands through his hair again, his face now so pale that Roxy could make out a few of the freckles on Albus' cheeks that helped to mark him as a Weasley. That had to be hard on him, she thought to herself, being in charge of this whole group and having to tell a girl that her sister was dead in front of so many people.

There were several more minutes where they all just sat there, awkwardly watching Aniya cry while people struggled to comfort her; finally, she sat back up and wiped away her tears, looking around the room with reddened eyes as she sniffled.

"I—I kept hoping that I could get back in time to save them both, even if, deep down, I knew the odds of saving my sisters was always going to be very small. But—" she took a deep breath, "—it still hurts to know that I personally failed them."

"We all failed them," said Rose harshly, arms crossed as she dropped the last of the sheets of names that she'd been reading while Aniya cried. "Someone should have noticed sooner, said something faster, before government agencies could be allowed to sneak away mere _children_ without anyone so much as batting an eye. This is a failure on the wizarding community as a whole, not just you, Aniya."

Aniya merely shook her head in response, mumbling, "Saying that isn't going to make me feel any less worse about what happened, although I appreciate the sentiment," before slumping once more into her seat, looking like she was still on the verge of tears.

Roxy's cousin cleared his throat awkwardly, nodding in Aniya's direction a few times but not saying a word. Finally, he seemed to find his foot once more, clapping his hands together loud enough to make everyone pause and look back at Albus, who, Roxy could see, was still trembling slightly form the pressure of so many eyes on him all at once.

"I think—perhaps, I mean—if we were to send people that were connected to the Ministry, who could sneak in relatively unnoticed to possibly investigate where they may be—be holding the children from those lists, then we'll be able to actually form a break-out plan to get them all back to safety or—or to..."

"To at least tell those families who've been looking for their dead kid just what the government took 'em for in the first place?" asked Brennan roughly.

Grateful that he hadn't been made to say the words himself, Albus nodded shakily.

"Well, _I'm_ Ministry," continued Brennan, raising his arms slightly. "What about sending me around? After all I'm the only one who can access the DoM's archives and, who knows, maybe someone slipped up and their plans for the kids ended up downstairs with me? Just think about it— _someone_ must've not been doing their job right to begin with if you were able to waltz in casually and take something off of an Auror's desk and make copies of it without anyone noticing at all what you were doing."

Al's response was to shrug. "I have...ways...of not being noticed when I don't want to be."

Roxy knew he was referring to the Invisibility Cloak which both James and Albus shared. They claimed to have inherited the thing from their dad, though everyone knew that Invisibility Cloaks like that didn't have terribly long lives, especially if used as often as Albus and James used it. The two brothers were probably just playing a joke when they said stuff like that.

"And those on the list that aren't here that are labelled 'to be detained'?" Brennan pointed out, stabbing his finger in the direction of one of the names. "Doesn't that mean they're still out there somewhere but haven't been picked up yet? I think we should also send someone out to gather up the names that fall under that category—at least the older ones, like those who're at least Hogwarts age so we can keep them safe."

While the others began discussing who would be infiltrating the Ministry in the upcoming weeks, Roxy tuned them out.

Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on a low humming noise that she could hear behind her—just too quiet for her to make out individual sounds but loud enough that it could not simply be ignored. She frowned, doing her best to block out the sounds of her cousin and the others speaking and listened intently for the buzzing, humming noise that was growing increasingly louder with every passing second.

And then Roxy wasn't in Al or Scor's flat any more, which made her scream in shock, opening her eyes at the sudden wind as she came to the realisation that she was sitting on the sand of a cold beach.

"What in the hell?" Roxy cried out, reeling away from the water that slowly overtook the sandy ground before returning back to the ocean.

"Sorry." It was James Potter, still twenty-one, wearing a sheepish smile as he looked across the sea stretched out before them. "I had to get you away from there somehow and pulling from a memory just seemed easiest."

"This is a memory?"

James Potter only silently pointed in the direction of a bunch of shrieking children who were splashing each other with the cold water and ran across the sandy ground with reckless abandon, not caring that there were two strangers sitting at the opposite end of the beach, watching them.

Roxy recognised one of the smallest children running around as herself, probably no more than four or five years old. This must have been one of the regular family trips they took to Shell Cottage during the summer back when she was younger, with the kids playing outside and the adults just out of sight inside, sipping bottles of Butterbeer and chatting.

"Why this one?" We were here more than a dozen times in my life. Why this time?"

"It was the last one before Freddie went to Hogwarts, don't you remember?" James prompted, again raising an arm to point out her brother's shock of dark hair and dark skin that easily distanced himself from the rest of the Weasley grandchildren, just as it did to Roxy.

Freddie had never been back to Shell Cottage after today—not with Roxy, at least. After that, he was always too busy with his Hogwarts friends, playing Quidditch and getting into trouble more often than not. He came by a few times later on to hang out with Louis for a day or two but Roxy had no reason to tag along after cousins who were all at least four years her senior. The final time she'd come here was the summer before her brother's death, when he'd been too busy hanging out with Emily to come along with the rest of the family.

She turned to look at James Potter, who was now holding up a seashell and admiring it, turning the small item over in his hands as he examined its ridges and curves with careful eyes.

"So what did you want to tell me, then? I'm here now, so what did you drag me away for?"

"You guys are running out of time, I hope you know that," said James Potter quietly, almost as if to himself. "You'll be gone by the end of the year, that little girl is coming in only a few days, and every single day, a new child is added onto that list and pulled away from their family without warning or reason. The time you have left to make a move against _him_ is trickling away while you all sit around and investigate every new thing without actually acting out against anyone or anything." He frowned, lips pursed, and ran his hands through his hair, dropping the shell onto the sand. "Are you even close to being read yet? Because what I heard back there in the real world doesn't make it sound like you are to me."

"I'll be gone?" Roxy asked, astonished, as she frowned back at him. "Please explain what you mean by I'll be gone by the end of the year? Gone where? Gone in what way, exactly, do you mean?"

James Potter waves his hands at her, more focused on what he had to say rather than answering her growing concerns. "Are you prepared, Roxy Weasley? Do you guys know yet what it is you're facing off against?"

"No? How are we supposed to, when every opportunity given so far has either ended up in a dead end or led to even more questions? I don't know what you expect of me—of any of us—when our attempts have only proven fruitless time after time after time!"

His gaze fell away from her face as he pursed his lips in thought. He ran his hands through his hair—Roxy was beginning to think that this was a Potter family trait—and let out a sigh.

She wanted to scream at the ghost, to rant at him or hit him, because Roxy could tell that James Potter knew far more than he was letting on and it pissed her off that he was holding back for whatever reason. Why get mad or frustrated with her for not having everything figured out yet if she didn't even have access to all of the information they needed?

 _James Potter was a useless git_ , Roxy grumbled to herself. _A dead, useless git._

"I have the book," James Potter muttered to himself, unaware that Roxy could still hear him as well as not noticing the fact that she was currently glaring at him. "I could give it to her, I suppose, and that would certainly help out, wouldn't it? But they'd get mad—I could get into lots of trouble." His eyebrows bunched up as he thought. "When have I ever cared about getting trouble, though? No, no, this is my _grandson_ I'm putting at risk here, not to mention nearly twenty other people. And that's only in _direct_ harm's way. What if—hm..."

"What book are you talking about?" Roxy asked, blinking at him in confusion.

James Potter twitched, startled; he had almost entirely forgotten that Roxy was still there, so caught up in arguing with himself that he'd lost track of the subject of his internal debate. He let his eyes focus on Roxy once more, giving her a weak smile that did nothing to relax the scowl on her face or the harshness of her gaze.

"What book?" she asked again, more forcefully this time.

"A book..." James Potter looked away thoughtfully, a pensive expression on his face. "It would certainly help you, if I gave it to you, but then I would be punished _for_ giving it to you. I could even be punished for making you aware of its presence."

"But what does it—"

James Potter suddenly smiled, leaning down to give Roxy a tight hug. "Than you, Roxanne Weasley. You're a very clever girl. I hope such cleverness will get you through the next years, as brutal as they shall no doubt be."

"I don't understand—"

He smiled, pressing the hell of his hand against her forehead. She grew dizzy and Roxy could feel her knees go weak, but James Potter grabbed her before Roxy could hit the sandy ground.

"It'll all make sense when you wake up, don't worry," he whispered into Roxy's ear. "I won't abandon you or my grandson. The Weasleys are my family too and I _will_ keep you safe, as best as I can."

As her eyes closed, Roxy could hear the sound of the waves rushing toward them and children laughing loudly. She could feel sand on her face and water rushing across her skin right up until the moment where everything went black and her senses momentarily shut off entirely.

"Hey, Roxy, do you need to take a nap?" Jo's voice was loud in her ear, making Roxy jump in shock, suddenly snatched from total silence to being aware of the presence of so many other people in the room with her, who were all looking at her.

"Sorry," she muttered, embarrassed. Albus nodded at her, giving Roxy one of his usual easy smiles before he continued on with whatever he had been saying before James Potter had pulled her away from the discussion.

She leaned back against her chair, feeling a boxy shape pushing against her spine. Roxy twisted around, feeling behind her for whatever was between her back and the couch; eventually, she pulled out a small but very thick book. It had a leather cover, but nothing was written across the cover or even for the first few pages, Roxy noted, cracking it open.

" _I have the book,_ " James Potter had told her. " _I could give it to you_."

Was this the book to which he'd been referring, the one for which he may be punished for giving to her? Was this—was this the way of giving her the book without _technically_ giving it to her?

Roxy grinned down at the thick volume, impressed by the cleverness of the ghost. She'd heard that James Potter had been smart while he was alive and apparently he hadn't yet given up on getting around the system even in death.

Making sure no one else had noticed that she had the book, Roxy shrunk it just enough so that it would fit into the pocket of her jeans. She smiled to herself, intent on reading it once she got back home. Surely this had answers of some kind or else why would he have given it to her?

"Do you have anything else to add, Roxy?" Albus asked her, making Roxy look up at him once more, her eyes wide with startled shock, thrown suddenly from her thoughts at the sound of his voice.

Roxy shook her head, making Albus shrug and turn away to finish wrapping up the meeting. She continued to stare at her cousin, seeing the similarities between he and his grandfather. It was more than a little alarming to notice.

"Alright, then, I guess I will see all of you next time," Albus finished, clapping his hands together and giving everyone his widest smile, though Roxy could see the tension in his eyes.

She gave him an encouraging nod and a thumbs up in the hopes that it would make him feel better, but he only continued looking around the room with that same forced smile.

* * *

Four days later, while at work Roxy received a letter from Albus just as she was wrapping up for the day.

It was the sixth of April, she was completely exhausted and ready to go home, yet the owl—her cousin Albus'—refused to leave until she'd taken the letter from its beak. The owl hooted disdainfully and settled on the edge of her work station as Roxy opened the envelope.

 _Rox,_

 _We have headed to St Mungo's, as Lily's water is officially broken. (That's the correct term, right?)_

 _I am not sure of when you get off of work so I'm sending Cyrus along to inform you to kindly get your arse over to St Mungo's the absolute immediate second that you are available. Mum says you don't_ have to _hurry, since there will be lots of family members around already (and also "babies take a long time") but I say that you_ do _have to hurry over here, so you better or else face the consequences._

 _Your loving cousin,_

 _Al_

 _PS I'm serious. Get over here_ NOW!

"Hm," Roxy said quietly to herself, then looked over at Cyrus, who hooted dolefully at her once more. "I guess Albus wants me to head over to St Mungo's. What do you think, Cyrus?"

"Whoo," Cyrus replied, pecking at her stirring rod until Roxy shooed him away from it, admonishing the little bird.

"I guess I'll head over then. You know how to get back to Al's place, right, Cyrus?"

"Whoo."


	43. The Weasleys welcome Baby Potter!

_**Characters' views on adoption and young mothers do not necessarily reflect my own.**_

* * *

If, after today, Roxy never had to step foot into St Mungo's until the end of the world, it would be too soon. She truly did despise these white walls and spacious waiting rooms where the family was left to themselves, left to ponder over every little thing that might go wrong.

Aunt Ginny wasn't handling things very well, jumping to her feet any time that someone in white Healer's robes walked by or else fidgeting endlessly, snapping at Uncle Harry when he offered to ask for a Calming Draught on her behalf.

"It's not funny, Harry! She's too young to be having a baby, she's not ready for it. What if something goes wrong? What if she doesn't make it or the baby doesn't make it? I _told_ her to stay away from people like that Smith boy, but when does she ever listen to her mother? Never, I swear by it, she never listens to me!"

Tolkien, along with an older brunette woman and a male about Tolkien's age, were sitting on the opposite side of the every increasing brood of Weasleys, which now included Lily's parents, James and his girlfriend Caroline, Albus and Scorpius, Grandmum, Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, Victoire and her two boys, Hugo, Rose and Hannai, and Uncle Ron.

Molly and Lucy were going to be arriving very soon, Louis would be by nine o'clock, Granddad was at home with a stomach bug, Aunt Audrey and Uncle Percy would stop by whenever they were done with work, Roxy's mum was coming over once she finished visiting at Uncle Lee's house, and no one could seem to find Aunt Hermione.

Roxy, wanting an escape from the multitude of family members, stood up suddenly and headed over to Tolkien's far quiet and calmer end, giving him a small smile, which he did not return, too busy wringing his hands to notice her presence.

She sighed, turning to the older woman. "I'm Roxy," she said, hand outstretched. They shook. "I—uh, I'm Lily's younger cousin and I know Tolkien fairly well from...from, uh…"

"The parties?" the woman asked, laughing softly when Roxy gave her a sheepish nod. Her laugh was not cruel or condescending but rather like she'd just made a particularly bad joke and found it amusing to no end.

"He's a nice guy, Tolkien is," Roxy mumbled while avoiding eye contact with him, wondering if this was Tolkien's mum. She seemed far nicer than how he typically described her to be, though, so perhaps an aunt?

Tolkien leaned over at that moment, tapping the woman on the knee and nodding at Roxy. "This is my Aunt Sally and that's my cousin, Andrew. They're sort of two of the few family members I actually have left."

He didn't even sound upset about it, which was probably what made his statement hurt that much more. There was a resignation in Tolkien's voice, an acceptance that he knew hardly anyone wanted him around. His words made Roxy feel bad for every time that she'd quietly—or not so quietly—mocked Tolkien.

His aunt smiled benignly, giving Roxy a small shrug. "My brother has always been quite the arse but tossing his youngest away has got to be the worst thing he's done yet, in my mind at least. To neglect the boy for seventeen years and then abandon him to fend for himself?" She wrinkled her nose, disgusted. "My brother is well respected in many circles, but I only regard him as a monster. Thankfully, we have not been on speaking terms for nearly thirty years now."

Roxy gaped at Tolkien, who stared disinterestedly at his nails before looking up at the sight of a passing Healer. When they did not step inside to address the family, he fell back against his seat with a heavy sigh.

"My dear nephew persists that his father's actions affect him none at all, but you can see the effects. Detachment, depression, a tendency to see only the worst in himself despite all of his potential. He was approached by Henrik's Potions after graduation, did you know? The first Slytherin they asked since 1998 and Tolkien turned them down simply because all his life, the only thing anyone ever told him was that he wasn't good enough."

Tolkien gritted his teeth. "Aunt Sally, Roxy _works_ for Henrik's She's a Slytherin as well," he said shortly, scowling into his lap."

"Oh. Is that true, dear?"

Roxy faltered, stammering incomprehensibly for a few seconds. "Uh, yeah, I, er, you know, I'm just an intern right now but I plan on sticking with it full time and become a full partner in a few year's time but, er...it's a nice place, it's a good place to work, I guess, er, ma'am."

"Oh, you can call me Mrs Higgs or Sally, if you like."

"Thank you, Mrs Higgs," Roxy muttered. She sat in awkward silence, wishing Lily would just have her baby already so that she could get away from everyone here.

Just then, James and his girlfriend came over, sitting opposite of Roxy, who raised her eyebrows at the eldest of the Potter children.

"Figured it be mean to Caroline to throw her to that much family all at once," he explained distantly, shrugging. "Grandmum's already talking about getting married and having kids. Oh, Caroline." He turned to the blonde sitting next to him. "This is Roxy, my cousin. Roxy, this is my girlfriend, Caroline Letrai. And that's Tolkien Smith and Andrew Higgs."

Caroline waved at them all. She was of a slightly smaller than average height—though not as bad as Roxy—with very light blonde hair and big brown eyes that were clearly used to being pulled up in a smile, judging by the lines. She kept touching James, small nudges or pats on the hand or shoulder. Lingering touches.

Roxy could tell that James liked Caroline a lot more than he'd ever liked Camilla DuPoint, who was stuck up and made snide comments about everyone in the Weasley family.

Caroline, leaning against James' arm, gave Roxy a gentle smile. "James tells me that your family is quite intelligent. He said that you ranked number ten in your class last June?"

Roxy shrugged. It really hadn't been _that_ big of an accomplishment, not when the majority of her family ended up in the top ten. James himself had ranked higher than she at _his_ graduation.

"I was never one for school myself," continued Caroline cheerily. "To be honest, I nearly dropped out several times. But I didn't, at least. Graduated thirty-seventh, but I made it through."

James leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. "You just aren't good at tests, that's all. You're still a very smart girl, trust me, Cara."

"I ranked thirty-ninth," said Tolkien. "But there were more than forty of us, so at least I wasn't second to last. Andrew was thirteenth—he's far smarter than I am."

Andrew blushed slightly but said nothing.

"What about you, Aunt Sally? What'd you end up ranking in your class?" Tolkien asked, turning to look at the older woman, who'd been skimming through an outdated copy of _Witch Weekly_ with undisguised boredom.

"Hm?" She looked up, confused momentarily. "Oh, they didn't really...I mean, with the war and everything, no one really had time to focus on NEWTS and then, with not a whole lot of people coming back the following September to repeat the year, it's hard to truly say how I would've seriously ranked. It was way less than—than half of my original class that even came back. Some of them, like Harry and Ron—" she nodded her head in their direction, "—were offered jobs and didn't see the worth in coming back. Others like Crabbe or Lavender Brown had died. Parvati Patil never came back because they kept telling her that Padma might die any day and then it didn't happen for four years." Mrs Higgs looked down sadly. "We didn't have a full group so they didn't really bother ranking us at the end. What was the point, when we'd already proven ourselves capable?"

Roxy nervously twisted the skin of her middle finger back and forth, feeling bad that they'd even started this conversation and forced such a nice lady to recall what must be, for her, very terrible memories.

Then, as though she'd said nothing at all, Mrs Higgs smiled at them all. "So James, is it true that your sister is having a girl?"

"Er, yeah. But she hasn't told me the name, so don't bother asking. I'm actually pretty sure she doesn't have a name even picked out and Lily's only being mysterious for attention. It's...it's kind of her thing, being dramatic so that people will pay attention to her. Probably a good thing that she's a Potter—means that people even have a reason to care."

"Or," amended Roxy, "she only enjoys acting out _because_ people treat her differently for being a Potter. Phoenix and the flame, is it not?"

"And you're a Slytherin?" Caroline asked with a small laugh. "You seem so clever, I could absolutely see you in blue and bronze."

Roxy shrugged. In absolute honesty, the Sorting Hat had waffled between Slytherin and Ravenclaw for a few seconds, though Roxy wasn't the sort to stop and wonder about what could've been different if she were a Ravenclaw. Wondering about it would do nothing to change how people saw her for being in Slytherin.

Caroline, James, and Mrs Higgs continued talking about Lily's pregnancy while Roxy looked over to Tolkien and his cousin.

They didn't _look_ related, Roxy thought to herself. Tolkien was dark-haired, olive-skinned, tall and reedy, with a haunted look in his eyes; Andrew was on the shorter side for males, still somewhat chubby, with blonde hair and a friendly smile on his face. If it hadn't been pointed out to her, Roxy would never have guessed that the two males were cousins.

And then the cold voice in her head wondered if that's what people thought when they looked at Roxy and James or Roxy and Lily or really Roxy and _any_ of her cousins. She didn't look much like a Weasley, with curly, dark brown hair and hazel eyes, as well as skin that was darker than any of her cousins' freckles.

 _Not really a Weasley._

Roxy had heard it before, from bullies at Hogwarts, but she'd never listened to their words at first, pushing them aside as just the sort of stupid things that anyone would liked to belittle other people would say. At first, it was like being focused on for wearing glasses or being overweight, but after she grew older and it was adults who were drawing comparisons between her and the rest of the Weasleys, Roxy grew annoyed.

Okay, so she wasn't the same fair-skinned red-haired darling like her other cousins, but Albus was dark-haired, Uncle Bill's children were blonde. Even James' hair was a muddy brown rather than the stereotypical red. Why was she different just because none of the other Weasleys were black like she was?

Roxy took a deep breath, realising that she had derailed herself briefly. Anyone who counted her as less of a Weasley based purely on the colour of her skin, then they were far too much of an idiot for her to bother dealing with—not that she particularly wanted to, either.

"Are you okay?" Tolkien asked, leaning over to pat Roxy's leg. He seemed genuinely concerned, head tilted as he ran his eyes up and down, making sure that Roxy wasn't about to throw up or faint. "Are you nervous about Lily? I know _I_ am."

Roxy nodded, deciding it was easier to change the subject and pretend like she hadn't just been ranting to herself for several minutes about something that wasn't event currently an actual issue for her.

"She's always been really dramatic, hasn't she?" Tolkien continued. "I remember the Quidditch matches, before she was even on the team—even then, you could hear her shouting encouragements over everyone else."

"Yeah, James and—and Freddie were both on the team while she was there, I remember that. She'd even cheer on me when it was Slytherin against any of the other two houses. And I remember a few of the matches before then, when my brother and my cousin Dominique were on their respective teams. Though Freddie had graduated right before I started Hogwarts, I did get to see a match or two with my parents."

Tolkien gave her an eager smile, glad to have to talk about. "You were Beater for Slytherin, weren't you? I was, er, a sixth year when you joined?"

"I was a third year, so yeah, you would've been a sixth year. But I was the Beater, yeah, just like my dad was back in his Hogwarts day."

"Your family is really big on Quidditch," noted Tolkien. "Three professional Quidditch players and a member for pretty much every position. You must play a lot as a family."

She shrugged. "Quidditch always just felt like one of those things that every Weasley got into and, considering my mum, it was always easy to get training tips. Christmas presents used to be new Quidditch kits, actually." The memory made her laugh. "But I'm not serious about it like Mum was. I would never bother trying to go pro."

"Your brother tried to, didn't he?"

The question made her freeze, mouth half way open and a strangled gurgling clawing at her throat. How was she supposed to answer that? _Yeah, he was trying out for Puddlemere and that's what ultimately killed him._ How would that make her seem—like she was still about it, even five and a half years later?

(Should she confess that Roxy did, in fact, hate Puddlemere United now, despite it being the team of her mother and cousin James. Should she admit to knowing the exact name and address of the man who had hit her brother with a Bludger?)

James must have been listening to their conversation because he suddenly swooped in, giving Tolkien the easy grin that made it obvious he was Albus' older brother. "Hey, Smith, did you know that Roxy here is well-versed in ghostly lore? Yeah, my little brother's told me all about your sudden new obsession. What's that about?"

"Al told you?" Roxy's voice raised half an octave.

"Well, more like I heard him talking to Lily about ghosts and you and all sorts of crazy stuff like that back in February." James laughed, but there was a strange look in his eyes, like he knew more than he was letting on. "But that's just Al being Al, right? You aren't one of those nutters who goes ghost hunting all the time, are you?"

Roxy and Tolkien shared a brief, knowing look. He raised his eyebrows at her behind James' back, smirking slightly.

"Of course I'm not," she said. "Albus was probably just joking around with Lily about something—or perhaps the book he's working on right now is about ghosts?"Albus Potter, the famous novelist. It still made her laugh to think about her cousin hunched over a piece of parchment, writing endlessly for hours at a time.

"But what does that have to do with you?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps a character is based on me? After all, I'm such a _terribly interesting_ person." Roxy made a face at her cousin, wrinkling her nose at him.

James didn't look entirely convinced but he dropped the topic in favour of beginning a story about Lily as a child for Caroline and Tolkien's benefit, laughing as he spoke about how dramatic and over the top Lily was, even as a little girl, putting on one-person shows for her family to watch, making them laugh and compliment her.

While he spoke, Roxy returned once more to her thoughts, wishing Lily would have her baby already. Roxy really didn't like hospitals and she didn't like waiting—how long did giving birth really take?

It felt like they'd already been here for at least half the day, though when Roxy checked the closest clock, she was stunning to see it was only just past eight-thirty in the evening—Roxy hadn't even been here for a full two hours yet.

Just then, a Healer appeared at the doorway of the waiting room, making Aunt Ginny, Tolkien, and many others suddenly stand up and move towards him in the hopes that he had come to offer answers of some kind or, even better, tell them that I was time to greet Lily and her new little daughter.

The Healer looked around at them all cautiously; no one had told him that there were so many people. He'd never had to deal with such a large family all at once. "Er, hello, all," he said, then gulped at hearing the tremor in his own voice, blushing.

Aunt Ginny hurried towards him with a determined look, taking the man's hands in her own and speaking with a rushed, hurried tone. "Hello, I'm Lily's mother. Is she alright? Is the baby here yet? How is she doing? Is it okay for us to see her now? How's my baby—my granddaughter?"

Uncle Harry, also on his feet at this point, gently took his wife by the shoulders, whispering into her ear. He had noticed the panicked, close to screaming look in the young Healer's eyes. "Perhaps we let the nice man explain everything first _before_ we bombard him with questions?"

Aunt Ginny nodded, giving the Healer an uneasy smile as she apologised, taking a deep breath to calm herself down.

The Healer gulped audibly, still visibly unnerved. "I—er, uh, I'm the junior Healer, working with Madame Elliot and, erm, your daughter—Ms Potter—she's delivered a healthy baby girl at approximately eight-eleven in the evening. The infant is forty-seven and a quarter centimetres long as well as weight three-point-three kilograms."

"And a name? Did she pick a name?"

He nodded. "The infant's name is Ruby Anne Potter Weasley."

* * *

Lily sat up when Roxy was finally let in to see her; she fell in of importance behind Tolkien and the Potters, as a very "little" cousin of apparently no true relevance, as far as St Mungo's seemed to care.

Roxy's cousin looked absolutely exhausted, having been in labour since noon. Her normally vibrant red hair was now lifeless and darker in colour, hanging limply around her face, which wore a tight, pinched expression. Lily's eyes were wide and had shadowed bruises underneath them while her cheeks and lips were almost ghostly white.

In total, she had none of the glowing happiness that a new mother was typically reported to have; instead Lily looked like she'd just been in a terrible accident.

"Hello, darling Roxy," Lily said, her voice hoarse from several hours of screaming. "Would you like to meet the little monster that they pulled out of me?"

A trembling finger directed Roxy's attention towards a magically self-rocking bassinet. Inside of it, peacefully sleeping, was a red-faced little creature with a head covered in light red fuzz. She had Lily's narrow nose and arched eyebrows as well, though her ears were closer to Tolkien's, being small and pointed—almost fae-like in nature.

"Her eyes were blue when they showed me. Made her open 'em right up and show me blues I've never seen in our family before." Lily took a noisy gulp of air. "Madame Elliot assures me her eyes will change with time, eventually shifting towards whatever colour her genetics told her eyes to be, whether it be my brown or Tolkien's dark grey or something else."

Roxy nodded; that made sense enough to her, she supposed, still staring down at the resting infant with an affection smile that she presumed would never appear on Lily's face.

"You named her Potter Weasley?" Roxy asked, finally turning to face her cousin once more.

Lily nodded, her hair falling forward to block the dark storm brewing on her face. "I suspect the Potter bit will be taken off or hidden from her for the majority of her life, if not for all of it."

"So you're truly giving her up for adoption?"

"She's staying with family at least, so don't look at me like that. Grandmum has offered to take custody of Ruby until Lucy's fully recovered, but we're going through all the formal adoption procedures tomorrow morning. And then _Lucy_ will be the one she calls Mum while I will be downgraded to Cousin Lily, free from all the responsibilities of parenting and motherhood and whatever other crap Lucy will have to suffer through."

"Why Lucy? Rose and Hannai have been trying to adopt for nearly a year—"

"And they are the ones who told me they weren't interested in obtaining custody of Ruby. I'd heard the idea from Rose already and they merely confirmed it again tonight. Rose wants nothing to do with Ruby simply because she doesn't look at _me_ favourably."

"But she's wanted a child since—"

"Rose is willing to put that desire on hold, if the alternative means raising my little monstrous spawn. To be entirely truthful, I am glad for it. Rose would have turned Ruby into some little bookish Ravenclaw and absolutely ruined her."

Roxy said nothing; like most of her family, she had assumed that Lily would eventually develop feelings of motherly affection for the life growing inside of her.

Apparently, that was not the case.

Her cousin, as though she could tell what Roxy was think, sighed heavily. "It's the same as what I said back in November. I'm simply not interested in being a mum, certainly not right now and possibly not ever. Lucy'll be a good mum to Ruby because she's loving and kind—a far better person than I am, at least at this point in my life."

Again, Roxy remained silent, though this time it was out of agreement. Lily, at twenty-one and with the way that she behaved now, was a terrible candidate for motherhood. So maybe it really was a good thing that she felt nothing at all for her infant.

Or perhaps she _did_ feel something—compassion and enough of a sense of understanding to realise tha there were others out there who would be far better for Ruby than Lily could ever be. Lily wasn't being _entirely_ selfish.

Just a lot.

"Is Lucy okay with the name Ruby? Or did you guys pick that out together? How did you think of it?" She could find nothing else to say.

Lily shrugged apathetically. "Lucy came up with it herself, I think. Or, that's what I'm pretty sure happened." She shrugged again.

"You don't know who came up with her name?"

A third shrug. "Perhaps I thought of it and then she happened to come up with it separately? I don't really remember, but honestly, does it actually even matter who said the name first?"

"I suppose not."

Roxy looked back down at her newest little cousin, wishing she could find the words to properly express how she felt right then. She could understand, almost entirely, why Lily was giving the girl up and she understood that Ruby would benefit from at least staying within the family and yet—

"Do you think you'll ever come to regret letting her go? In, say, five or ten or fifteen years, would you look at Ruby across the dinner table and feel like you've missed out on something special that you could have had with her by remaining her mum?"

The redhead paused, thinking Roxy's question over in silence before she answered in a slow, quiet voice. "Perhaps if I were to ever reach a point in my life where I'm ready to have kids then I might regret not keeping Ruby or if she reaches an important milestone in her life and I'm not there to see it, but right now I know I'm doing what's best for her and what's best for me."

"That makes sense," Roxy replied, watching Ruby shift in her sleep and make a small cooing noise. "I wouldn't make a very good mum. I'm far too young and I barely make enough money to pay for my third of the expenses—groceries and the rent and such. Throwing a little kid into the mix would be a terrible idea."

Lily mumbled something incoherent under her breath but nodded; her gaze had remained firmly away from where Ruby was sleeping, like the sight of it caused her some great level of immense pain that she would not be able to survive.

Perhaps she was not so detached from her daughter as Lily claimed to be.

The two cousins chatted for a few minutes longer until Albus appeared at the door and informed the girls that the Healers were kicking out all family members for the night so that Lily and Ruby could get some peaceful sleep.

"Sleeping is all she's done yet!" said Lily, rolling her eyes. "Can't Roxy stay a few minutes longer? I have an important question to ask her."

Lily gave her brother a look that must have meant something between the siblings, even if Roxy didn't understand it in the slightest, because he nodded, replying, "I'll delay them for as long as I can."

Roxy turned back around to look at Lily, who gave her a friendly smile in response. Roxy did not entirely trust that smile—with Lily, it could mean any number of things, not all of them necessarily something Roxy would like.

"What's the question, then?" she asked, hands pressed into the bottoms of her pockets. "What do you want to ask me? We aren't any more updated on the ghost situation since the last time I saw you, remember?"

Lily's smile slipped a tad and she folded her arms across her chest, looking cross. "Is ghosts all you ever think about any more? Don't you know how to enjoy life away from the government conspiracy nonsense?"

"Not when the government conspiracies threaten our very existence, no I do not."

This earned Roxy a heavy sigh and a shake of Lily's head. "I swear, between you and my brother, there's hardly any fun left in the world."

"Mm. So what's the question?"

"Well—and Lucy is completely on board and in agreement with this, so you won't get out of it very easily. But every little girl needs a mum, right?"

"Er, yeah, sure." Roxy wasn't sure where this conversation was headed, but she didn't much like the sound of it already.

"But it always helps to have a back-up plan, in case the mum you grow up with gets sick and dies or goes crazy or has any other number of bad things happen to them. And Ruby, well, yeah, she's got a big family already that'll love her no matter what, but in case something happens to Lucy, it's good to have everything planned out so someone is around to take care of her, in case of the worst possible scenario ever actually happening."

"I don't understand. What exactly are you asking me?"

"If Lucy finds herself incapable of filling her motherly duties, either due to injury, illness, or death, it would be nice—for both of us—to know that someone has Ruby's best interest at heart. And I know you're only nineteen right now but Dad was seventeen when he was appointed custody of Teddy, even if it was just until his gran took over again. But I think you'll make a great mum one day and Lucy agrees, like I said, so everything would work out perfectly for Ruby and for you and..."

Roxy was growing exasperated with her older cousin. "Lily, would you just ask the damn question already before we get kicked out?!"

"Roxy Weasley, will you be Ruby's godmother?"


	44. Lily says good-bye to Baby Potter

_**Again, characters' views on motherhood and adoption do not reflect my own.**_

* * *

" _Roxy Weasley, will you be Ruby's godmother?"_

* * *

The question made Roxy freeze up, mouth open in shock as she gaped at the red-headed girl; she continued to stare at her mutely as Lily twisted her bed sheets nervously and waited for an answer.

"Wha—" Roxy's voice caught in her throat, coming out as a strangled mess. She coughed into her shirt, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Finally, after a deep breath, she tried to speak again. "What do you mean by me being Ruby's godmother?"

Lily continued to twist the sheets caught in her grip, looking frantic and close to tears. "Just that if Ruby ever found herself lacking a mum, you would be willing to step into the position for her."

"And so you, her actual mother, would not have to? Is that why you're asking? To get out of the job yourself no matter what?"

Lily shook her head. "No! N-no...no." She blinked, tears clinging to the ends of her eyelashes. "Tomorrow morning, I will be signing away my rights as Ruby's biological mother to Lucy. I'll be the same as any cousin to her and my relationship with Ruby will be severed entirely beyond a distant relation. After I sign that paper, Lucy will be the only one to make the important choices concerning her daughter, but since we're in agreement about it, I figured it'd be easier just to ask you here and now. Lucy and I would appreciate you being Ruby's godmother."

"I'm _nineteen_ , Lily."

"I know that," her cousin replied, speaking quickly. "Didn't I say I know that? But you'd make a good mum five years from now or ten years or whatever, in case of—but what matters is that you'd totally be a great parent because you're bright and responsible and so well put-together."

"I've been to just as many parties as you have."

"Yes, but you've stopped, haven't you? And with Kieran awake, maybe you'll get back together, which is good news because then there'd be two people to take care of her and—"

"I'm not getting back with Kieran," said Roxy curtly, feeling like she might snap at her cousin if the other girl didn't stop speaking soon.

"Okay, but you'd still be a significant influence. Lucy loves you anyway— _everyone_ loves you, even Rose—and I think being a godmother would be good for you and it'd make you happy in the long run. Besides, I know you're going to say yes in the end, so there's no point in arguing about it."

"And I think you're completely insane. _I_ cannot be anyone's godparent! I'm just as likely to die as Lucy is if this war does happen, which is becoming more and more likely with every passing day."

"Won't you, at least, consider it—"

Albus knocked on the door, making them both jump. "Hey, Elliot's saying it's time to go now or else she'll come in her and pull Roxy out herself. And, between you two and myself, I don't think she was exactly kidding."

Roxy, glad to be rescued from having to give Lily an answer, hurried out of the room, waving a quick good-bye to Lily, who wore an expression akin to someone who had just been slapped in the face and told she was absolutely hated.

Though Roxy didn't want to admit it to Lily right then, the idea of being _anything_ close to a parental role was the terrifying thing—and it was something she didn't even want to contemplate it right then. It was far easier to avoid the subject. Or, at least, it, was easier for now, and that was all that she actually needed to focus on right then.

* * *

That night, as Lily was sleeping, twisting from side to side in the uncomfortable hospital bed, she found her dreams becoming less of the usual incoherent mess that everyone usually experienced and instead shifted to something far stranger—and far more vivid.

Lily found herself staring into her reflection, looking at a mirror that was attached to an unfamiliar boudoir. Her hair was longer than how she remembered; her face had wrinkles on it that no twenty-one year old should ever have; in all, she looked much closer to a woman in her late thirties or early forties. And was that a grey strand of hair hanging by her ear?

Letting out a horrified gasp at her own appearance, Lily pushed away from the boudoir, nearly toppling over in her seat.

"Lily?"

A man, even older than she appeared to be, stood in the doorway, giving her a worried look. He had closely cropped blond hair, brown eyes, and laugh lines around the corners of his mouth. Lily had never seen this man before in her life, so she did what any rational person would do when confronted by a strange man that her name for some reason—

She screamed bloody murder.

"Lily!" The man cried out, hurrying over to assess that nothing was wrong with her. "What's wrong? Why are you yelling?"

"Who in the hell are you?" Lily demanded, hitting his chest. "Where am I? What did you do to me, you crazy—where the hell am I?"

"What—" The man stopped, his eyes narrowing as he thought. "Are you having one of your visions again, Lils? Is that what's wrong?"

"I don't know what in the _hell_ you're going on about, but you better let go of me right this instance. My dad's an Auror, you know!"

He gave her a knowing laugh. "And so is Teddy and James and Remy soon enough, as I'm aware of it. I know the situation."

"What?" She recoiled from him. "James isn't an Auror; he plays Quidditch. And Remy—if you mean Vic and Teddy's boy, he's only five years old. He can't even tie his own shoes properly let alone be an Auror."

"And how old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

"But you don't _look_ twenty-one, now do you?" She shook her head. "That's because you _aren't_. At least, right now you aren't. I—I don't fully understand how it all works but you get these like—like vision sometimes or you'll start to act like you're an entirely different age, as if some younger version of you can see into _your_ future and _my_ present."

"You're my husband?" It was, apparently, the only question she could form.

"We're engaged to be married, but I'm not your husband just yet." He grinned at her. "If you're twenty-one, you must not be too far off from meeting me. This is probably the youngest version of you that I've ever encountered."

"What year is it?"

"2041."

Was she honestly going to be engaged in twelve years? Lily couldn't imagine saying yes to anyone, even this friendly stranger. Surely this was all some incredibly bizarre dream? She wasn't _really_ in the future and she couldn't _really_ see things that were going to happen. The very notion was ridiculous!

Having decided this, Lily came to the conclusion that, because none of this was actually real, she might as well enjoy herself with this handsome man.

"My name is Thomas, by the way," he said, then paused, frowning. "That feels so strange to be saying to my own fiancée."

Just then, a red-haired girl of about ten or so years appeared in the doorway. Lily stared at her, wondering this was some little sister or half-sister of Ruby. Was Lily going to become pregnant _again_ so soon?

"Nicolas is crying," the girl said, giving Lily a cold look. Lily got the feeling she wasn't particularly close with her daughter.

"Can you give him his bottle, Ruby? A warm one should be waiting—I just put Warming Charms on the ones in the fridge." Thomas gave the girl a smile, to which she merely rolled her eyes and stomped out of sight.

"Wait— _that's_ Ruby?" Lily could feel her eyes physically widen from the shock that was currently coursing through her body.

 _Had_ something happened to Lucy that she was unable to raise Ruby? Had Lily's offhand statement to Roxy earlier killed off her dear cousin?

This is a dream; she reminded herself. _A very_ vivid _dream, but a dream nonetheless. You're only imagining all of this happened because of everything that happened earlier today. That's how dreams work. None of this is real._

"That's my daughter," Lily told Thomas slowly, not able to make the words feel real even as she said them out loud. "I had her today...but Lucy's her mum now. Why's she here? And who's Nicolas?"

Thomas laughed. "Nicolas is our son. We have two of them now. Theodore is just recently six and we had Nicky back in October. And as to why Ruby is at our home instead of with her family, well, you and Lucy have decided to try a bit of a 'rebuilding' of your relationship after everything that's happened, so Ruby is spending the Christmas holidays with us to help her cope with everything."

"She knows I'm her birth mother?"

"Ruby found out last year—she's a second year in Gryffindor right now, actually. The whole family was quite proud."

Lily felt incredibly light-headed, nearly tumbling from her chair from the shock, but Thomas caught her before she could fully fall out.

"She knows? And now she—what, she hates me? Is that it, she hates me?" Lily shouldn't have expected anything less. _But this is a dream, it all has to be a dream or else I'll go crazy from the guilt of it all. There's no way any of this is real._

"She doesn't _hate_ you, Lily," replied Thomas consolingly, helping Lily to her feet and guiding her into the living room, which was spacious, well-furnished, and contained several children's' toys scattered across the floor, including a toy broomstick and a stuffed dragon.

There was also a big, flat, black _thing_ sitting on the wall as if suspended in the air by magic. Lily was pretty sure such a thing was called a tee-vee—she'd seen one in her muggleborn friend Nadia's house once—and she thought it acted a bit like wizarding photographs except that there were brighter colours and it made noise.

"Are you muggleborn?" she asked politely of Thomas.

"Hm?" His gaze followed hers to the black rectangle and he laughed. "Oh, no, but my ex-fiancée was, which is how I got addicted to shitty telly shows." He laughed again.

"You were previously engaged?"

He nodded. "But she passed away and now you and I are engaged, so don't die before we can get married, alright?" His smile was teasing; Lily had the feeling that, if she really knew this man in the future, they grow to be very close.

 _It's a dream. A dream, a dream._

He led her to a leather couch, slowly helping Lily ease into the seat like he was afraid she might collapse from the shock of everything that had happened. She tried to give him a reassuring pat on the arm but he was already speaking again.

"And I have a daughter as well, named Alia, who's about fourteen now, but she lives with her aunt and has ever since I moved in with you."

"This is my house?" Lily couldn't stop asking what she felt were very idiotic questions as her brain continued to spin. _Just a dream, just a dream._

"Yeah, and what a beautiful place it is, huh? You and Theo had it pretty well off before Nicky and I took over the place." His teeth were perfectly white and straight, Lily suddenly noticed. "The place is quite big—plenty of room for the kids to each have their own room. You always tell me that you didn't much care for having to share a dorm at Hogwarts so your children weren't going to share a room for as long as possible."

She nodded; that statement certainly _sounded_ like something she'd say though the idea that she actually _did_ have children— _in a dream, just a dream—_ was alarming.

"Are we happy?" Lily asked, looking up at Thomas nervously, hoping the answer was yes. She didn't want to find that, even in her dream world, she was stuck in a trashy relationship. "Please be honest with me."

He paused, fiddling with a fraying thread on the very end of his shirt for several long seconds; then, slowly, he nodded. "I'm not the perfect fiancé, but we love each other a whole lot, you and I. After Ellie...I wouldn't have proposed to you if I didn't think we were happy. But all the things I was afraid would scare you away—that I was engaged, that I have a daughter, that I'm eight years older than you—none of it seemed to matter to you so much as the fact that we were good together and that made you happy."

"Tolkien—" She had to know, had to find out if this future—because the voice saying _it's a dream_ was becoming less and less convinced that was true—had been kind to Tolkien.

"Who?" Thomas' brow furrowed. "Oh, Ruby's dad. I think he's engaged to some girl named Aurora or Abigail or something starting with an 'A'. Ruby knows about _him_ , too, mostly because she is old enough to remember 'the time before Lucy was engaged' and asked too many questions. "He smiled and Lily felt the sudden urge to kiss him, which didn't even make sense. "Last I checked, Tolkien had a pretty lucrative deal helping the Ministry locate time dust to bring back their supply of Time Turners from the days of old."

"And the rest of my family? James, Albus, Teddy, my parents and cousins and everyone else? How are they in the future How have they been in the next twelve years of my life?"

"Well, Vic and Teddy's eldest is going to graduate this year, along with Fai. Will is a fourth year, Ruby is a second year, and Vic's twins are first years now. Er, your older brother has two girls and a boy, Albus and his husband have something like half a dozen kids between them and there are nearly thirty Weasley-Potter descendants at this point—I don't know all their names." He shook his head, still with that humoured expression on his face. "When Weasleys reproduce, they really go all out."

"What about Hugo?" Lily asked, thinking of the cousin with which she had the closest relationship. Hugo, at twenty-one had never dated anyone nor seemed the least bit interested in doing so and Lily wanted to know how he ended up, assuming that this _wasn't_ all an elaborate dream and she _had_ in fact somehow woken up twelve years in the future.

"Er..." Thomas bit his lip, making a face. "I don't...you might not want to know about Hugo before it happens because then you'll worry about it and try to change things, then feel guilty when everything goes sideways anyway."

She gasped. "Is—is he dead now?" she asked, tears filling her eyes. "Did something happen to Hugo? Is he dead?"

Thomas nodded slowly. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm really, truly sorry, Lily, we didn't know it would happen and he was just so young—it was last week and..." His voice faded away until she couldn't even understand what he was saying.

* * *

She woke up sobbing.

* * *

Roxy avoided St Mungo's the whole day, keeping herself busy by going through all the documents that currently cluttered her room.

Though most of it had been written in the last two and a half decades—still relatively young—they had not been well cared for, leading to many of the pamphlets and essays showing signs of decay much more comparable to a piece of paper three times its age.

She gingerly picked up one article from 2007, a rejected letter to the editor of _The Daily Prophet_ ; Roxy could see why, to a sane person that thought the ghosts were all gone, this particular letter had been discarded and placed in the darkened archives to rot away.

 _I am keeping a daily journal_ , the letter started in barely discernible handwriting. _I've been seeing odd things that I haven't seen since all the ghosts went poof and abandoned us mortals to the approaching monsters. Strange beasts are appearing in the garden—they whisper and howl any time that I leave the screen door open. I almost could swear that they're saying my name, but not in a friendly way. They don't want to say hello, they aren't here for tea. I am afraid for my life and am keeping this journal in fear that I may not live long enough to tell someone the truth about what is going on. I'll be sending the whole thing to_ The Prophet _tomorrow, though whether they'll listen for once is doubtful._

 _Karl Sutherland, August 2007_

Though Roxy didn't know this, the editor had found Mr Sutherland to be completely out of his mind and wrote _Nutter—do not submit!_ over the cover of Sutherland's journal—of which the other entries were now missing—and tossed it into the newspaper's archives, presumably with the hope that it was never seen again.

But, after years of being passed from one department to the next of _The Daily Prophet_ , it had finally been put on loan by Erick Tarving and never returned, which no one at _The Prophet_ saw fit to complain about. Then, following Tarving's death, the remaining pages of the journal had been swept up as just one more of Tarving's papers and placed in the DoM archives along with everything else of his.

The more of Tarving's notes that Roxy read through, the more respect she had for the man, impressed by his dedication to bringing the truth to a world that thought he was completely out of his mind.

And _he_ hadn't had a circle of like-minded people to help him investigate everything and split up the research. It had just been himself until the very end, surrounded by individuals who called him crazy and tried to have his research shut down all the time.

Roxy continued reading, looking for anything that would be particularly helpful. She wished someone had told her that starting a war would require so much effort.

 _To whom it may concern,_

 _Though I have personally never believed or put much faith into the idea of fortune telling, prophecy, Divination, or whatever, else people may call it. Like many other witches and wizards, I grew up believing that Divination was a tender, tenuous skill that belonged only to charlatans and basilisk oil salesman—people seeking to make a quick Galleon or two off of the particularly dull and the easily deceived._

 _My grandmother claimed to be one of those who could see into the future and, as per my parents' advice, I disregarded this claim any time it was brought up. After all, don't most ageing women wish that they possessed some secret skill to be dramatically unveiled in their twilight years? So my grandmother was merely senile, I told myself every time._

 _I was not to believe her._

 _And then came the fateful day that changed my perception of my grandmother and everything I'd ever known—18 March 2005._

 _My grandmother, now well into her final days, was too weak to leave the bed and could, in truth, hardly even speak, as her vocal cords were much abused after years of smoking muggle cigarettes. Yet that morning, my grandmother came into our living room as naked as the day she was born._

 _My mother shrieked, frightened to see her own mother walking around without any clothes on and she quickly began scolding Gran for pushing her health in this way. My mother, loving as she is, has always been very strict to Gran these past years, seeing her mother's well-being as one more chore to check off every day._

 _As though she could not hear anything being yelled at her, my gran began to speak, and though it has been more than a decade since this even, I shall never forget her words, which were this:_

" _By summer, those not of this life will cease to be, stolen away by an unseen force and hidden from the sight of mere mortals. We will not see them again for a generation and their return shall only be heralded by a ruby and a wise man. Their maturity shall end the war."_

 _At the time, I, like my mother, passed off Gran's words as a bout of insanity. Then, the day before the ghosts disappeared, my grandmother died due to complications she'd been suffering from for more than a decade. The Healers told us it was simply her time to go._

 _And the next morning, my world fell apart all over again with the news that ghosts, spirits, and apparitions had suddenly disappeared entirely, as though they were claimed all at once, all over the world._

 _I'm not saying that my grandmother had any abilities to see into the future but I cannot deny that her words—the first half at least—have come true._

 _Now the only thing left to do is wait for the ruby and the wise man. And I recommend that you wait, too._

Roxy set that particular essay aside, more than a tad alarmed by its contents. The grandmother's words were eerily reminiscent of what Lily and Professor Trelawney had said and the memory of the prophecy with her name on it from the DoM only heightened that connection further.

Lily's daughter...Ruby...and all four so far had mentioned a Ruby born after a generation of ghosts being gone, which had happened nearly twenty-four years ago. Was it possible that Lily's daughter was the ruby of which the prophecies were speaking?

And if so, who was the wise man they kept referring to? Perhaps someone not yet born? Would she now have to keep track of all the magical children born in the next few years just to make sure that she would know which child would be the one to bring the ghosts back and save them all from the Faceless One?

But if they were only a few short years from seeing the return of the ghosts, then it was _important_ that they be especially vigilant about any children born that might potentially fulfil the prophecy that kept cropping up.

She set all the paperwork aside, letting out a sigh. Roxy didn't know how much time they had left until the Faceless One tried to destroy everything.

Merlin, they _really_ needed new names for everything. This was getting ridiculous.

* * *

"And I sign here?" Lucy asked, pointing at the line that said _adopt_ _ive parent_ _._

"Yes, Ms Weasley, right there if you don't mind," replied the Ministry agent overseeing the adoption process. He gave the two women in front of him a tense smile, eyes occasionally drifting towards where Lily was laying in her bed, scowling at him.

"My full name?"

"Yes, ma'am, your full and legal name, including the middle part and any titles you may have. After all, it's important that we have accurate records on who exactly is adopting young Ruby. After all," he said, laughing uneasily, "we don't want some total stranger walking off with a baby that isn't theirs."

Neither of the girls laughed, making the Ministry official tug at the collar of his robes and cough awkwardly, glancing around in the hopes that someone would come in and save him—where _was_ his partner?

 _Probably hitting on some young Healer-in-training_ , he thought to himself with a scowl.

"So, er, yes, if you just sign your name right here, Miss Weasley, and if your lovely cousin will sign _her_ name right _there—_ " he pointed at the spot labelled 'biological parent', "—then we can exchange the 1,000 Galleon fine and Ruby Anne Potter Weasley will officially and legally be yours."

Lucy nodded, signing her name—Lucy Helen Weasley—with a big flourish before passing the paperwork over to where Lily was resting. The younger girl made no move to take the papers.

"I always thought, for big stuff like this—adoption, marriage—you had to make an Unbreakable Vow in order for them to have any meaning," said Lucy casually. "Signing a paper and handing over some money makes everything feel far less...climatic, you know?"

The Ministry official smiled. "That's a misconception we hear all the time, but in actuality, there has never been any sort of law requiring an Unbreakable Vow. If a couple wants to include one in their wedding vows, that is a personal decision that we at the Ministry do not, nor ever have, condoned."

"Makes sense." She turned to Lily. "Are you going to sign, darling? Or have you changed your mind? Honestly, I don't mind if you have, but it'd be nice to know."

Lily looked between her cousin and the Ministry official, scowling. Then, wordlessly, she snatched up the paperwork and scribbled out _Lily Luna Potter_ before tossing it back at them.

"And your 1,000 Galleons," Lucy said cheerfully, handing him the bag of money. The Ministry official waved his wand over the purse, watching it glow green in confirmation of the agreed upon price having been met.

He picked up the paperwork, copying it twice with his wand so that both girls would receive a copy. "Now, because this is an open adoption, if you two agree or if your daughter ever chooses to seek out the truth about her mother, then Miss Potter's identity will _not_ be protected if the situation comes to a legal standpoint or in the case of submitting a request to see her birth records or any other official documents with Miss Potter's name on them."

"I know!" Lily suddenly snapped, glaring at him. "Trust me, I _know_ about the rules so if you could just _piss off_ , life would be a billion times easier. Just take her away already!"

"Er, okay," he replied, sharing a confused look with Lucy.

"I'll get a Healer to move Ruby to another room," said Lucy, slowly getting to her and leaving the room.

The Ministry official gave Lily Potter one last curious look, wondering how the girl could act so distantly towards her own offspring. But then again, she had not been the first mum he worked with who chose to give up their own children, though that was more often to a total stranger than another family member, allowing them never to have to see their discarded child again.

Then, wordlessly, he shut his briefcase and left, not even saying a simple good-bye to Lily, who cried quietly the second that the door closed behind him.

* * *

"Well?" David, his partner, asked as he snatched a bite of sandwich from Harald's hands and ate it himself with a large smirk. "Potter bitch give up her baby?"

" _Miss_ Potter," Harald stressed, glaring at the other man. "And yes, she did indeed give up the child to Lucy Weasley, as expected. Which _you_ would know if you ever bothered to do your job instead of flirting with anything that has legs."

"Ah, but you do my job so well," David replied, laughing haughtily. "And besides, Miss Meera simply _demanded_ my attention. She was so... _useful._ "

"She's of an age comparable to Cathleen," Harald pointed out, disgusted. "Would you like it if someone had done this to _your_ girl? She had a whole life to live. Why take it? You waste lives just to feed your own thirst."

"And?" David shrugged at him. "Not like anyone is around to see what I do."

Harald's response was to sigh and push past his partner. Unlike the revolting man, he was truly invested and committed to his job, as tiring and depressing as it could be at times.

"Come on, David, just shut up and follow me."

"What do I do with _her_?" David pointed to the still form on the floor, but Harald only waved a hand at him to keep moving. "Fine, but you better hope this works."

With that, he stepped over the prone, unmoving form of Meera Kosaraju and followed after Harald.

* * *

So...his first enemy's name was Ruby. How... _fascinating._


	45. The chapter about Hugo

Hugo had always been the kind of person who knew he would end up as more of a background character in most people's lives, which he was rather okay with in the grand scheme of things. He'd been the Hufflepuff from his fifth to his seventh years but did not strive for Head Boy, never even considered trying out for a Quidditch position for his house team, and remained as peacefully unknown as he possibly could, considering that he was the son of Hermione Granger-Weasley and Ron Weasley, which afforded him very little privacy for much of his life.

As a twenty year old, pudgy male with poor social skills and average test scores, Hugo hadn't been able to find some high power job where so much was expected of him. After all, he had never been very much like his sister, Rose, who everyone insisted was going to be extremely famous one day for finding some critical potion and change life as they knew it.

Hugo, instead, worked at Twillfitt and Tattings, lived in Diagon Alley South Side with Nicholas Halliday, Madison Bursnell, and, up until his attempted suicide in December and successful suicide in March, Ethan Aimes.

He'd been working at Twillfitt and Tattings since his graduation going on three years ago; it wasn't the _best_ paying job in the world and he would certainly never get world-wide fame and recognition from running a cash register but it came with a sense of security and comfort that Hugo liked too much to throw away in search of something bigger.

The closest he had ever gotten to breaking out of his shell as the less interesting Granger-Weasley child was joining a group called Phoenix.

They consisted of people who felt that the actions of the Order of the Phoenix hadn't been enough and that their disbandment back in 1998 was not the appropriate response to a world still in dire need of equality. Hugo found a lot of Phoenix's ideals to be agreeable and it was nice to have even this small connection to his parents' actions; besides, he had finally found something in his life that held some real value and meaning.

He could make a _difference_ working with Phoenix—and making a difference, even in this rather small way, was really what mattered in the end, wasn't it?

That his actions were improving the world in some way made it that much easier to get up every morning and deal with people who were far richer than he'd ever be and who also seemed to think this meant they were entitled to yell at him whenever something didn't quite go their way.

Not that Hugo didn't enjoy his job at the high-end fashion boutique; since everything from the merchandise to the clientèle themselves was so expensive and fancy, Hugo made a rather impressive stipend every week, considering his job, and he would certainly not find reasons to argue with that.

Hugo set his breakfast dishes in the sink, wondering how he was going to—eventually, some day, far in the future—tell his parents he'd joined a revolutionary group. Perhaps he could get away with never bringing it up at all, just letting life run its natural course and avoiding ever saying anything until they eventually figured it out themselves—presumably when his face showed up in _The Daily Prophet_ for his heroism.

"Are we pondering life's mysteries again, Mr Weasley?" Madison padded into the kitchen, giving him a friendly kiss on the cheek. "Don't you think it's a bit early in the morning for that sort of thing?"

He shrugged, looking out the kitchen window that gave them a view of the dirty street below. "What else am I supposed to ponder? How many days can Nick wear the same pair of boxers before they rot away?"

She laughed, heading into the pantry to grab a box of muggle cereal—Cheerios, which Hugo didn't understand in the slightest. They didn't come with a Cheering Charm, so the name didn't really make much sense in his opinion.

As always, Madison poured herself a bowl and began eating her breakfast _sans_ milk. Honestly, she was such a weird person.

"So do you have work today?" she asked, apparently trying to be casual about it as she sat down at the table. "Because if not, I thought we could maybe go into muggle London—did you know the just opened a new cinema recently? When's the last time you went to watch any films or plays with me?" Madison made a pouting face, giving Hugo the best 'puppy dog eyes' that she could muster; if it'd been any other day, he would have willingly said yes and gone with her in a heartbeat. His room-mate was always fun to hang out with and not have to deal with problems.

But Phoenix was meeting today—they were initiating a new guy...or girl. No one used their real names during meetings, only going by code names and the like when together. The logic behind that was the idea that, if anyone was ever caught—be it by the Ministry or their enemies—they wouldn't be able to give away valuable information they wouldn't _have_ any to give away in the first place.

"Hugo? Hello?" She leant up to rap her knuckles on his shoulder, pulling Hugo from his thoughts. "Are you going to give me an answer or should I just assume you don't want to have fun with me?" Madison pursed her lips.

"Sorry," he mumbled, looking away from the window to give her an abashed glance. "You know how work is—they never give me any time off and that rare day that I do have, I'm always too tired to do anything properly."

Madison nodded, watching as Hugo walked away from the kitchen to collect his cloak from the front hall cupboard. He was avoiding looking behind him, not wanting to see Madison's upset face.

"Hey, Hu, your sister's head is in the fireplace," Madison suddenly called from the kitchen, sounding so intensely bored that she might fall asleep right where she was sitting. She was pretending not to be hurt by Hugo.

"Thanks," he replied, pulling the least frayed cloak he owned over his head. It wouldn't do to let Rose see him without proper attire on, though Madison was a different story since she was both gay and in a relationship.

 _Rose is in the same boat_ , he mused to himself, sitting down in front of the fireplace, _but she's also my sister whereas Madison is just another girl that I live with. Therefore, the whole situation is entirely different. Besides, Rose doesn't want to see my dirty jumper._

Having decided this, he focused his attention on Rose's—literally—flaming head, which gave him a charcoal-filled smile.

"How's Lily?" he asked, having not seen his cousin since she gave birth last week. "How's she handling everything now that, er..."

"Oh, as bitchy as always," said Rose airily. The two girls had never gotten along terribly well, though no one was sure why. "But I was actually just wanting to tell you that Mum and Dad want us to come over for dinner—they have an announcement that they want to make this Sunday and apparently we need to know beforehand."

"Is it bad?"

If it was so important that it couldn't be announced at James' twenty-fifth birthday celebration, then the announcement was a bit more serious than them going on holiday or something.

Rose didn't say anything for a moment longer than she should have if it hadn't been anything major. "I don't know, Hu, but Dad wasn't smiling and he definitely wasn't _asking_ for us to come over. It was more like—like a demand. And you know how he is about demands."

Hugo nodded absently, his thoughts already spinning off in a million directions for why his parents would be insisting they come over.

Were they getting divorced? Was the shop closing? Were they sick? He was only twenty; that was way too soon to lose a parent. What If he got married? Who'd stand in their place if—

"Hu, don't go crazy with worry _just_ yet," Rose cautioned, giving her brother a tender smile. "For all we know, Mum got a promotion and Dad's creating drama for his own amusement. Merlin know why, considering he runs a joke shop for a living—amusement should be an easy enough thing to come by—but we can't be too hasty and assume everything's gone wrong without hearing the whole story first." She seemed to be trying to assure herself as much as her brother.

Neither were convinced.

Madison popped her head back into the kitchen. "Hey, if you're going to work today, it's nearly ten. You don't want to piss off old Twillfitt."

"Right." Hugo looked down at his sister's crackling face. "I'll see you tonight then, yeah?"

"Mmhm. Love you."

"Love you."

Rose's face disappeared, the logs once more becoming mere logs. Hugo let out a long sigh before getting to his feet and brushing the soot off of his cloak.

He'd never be able to live with himself if something happened to either of his parents. Of the two Granger-Weasley children, he was closer to their parents, having _not_ been the one to date Scorpius Malfoy for two years and then suddenly come out as gay and then marry a girl.

Not, of course, that Mum and Dad would hold it against him if he came out as gay, the same as they'd not reacted (too) poorly in Rose's case. Though Hugo was pretty sure he wasn't gay—he wasn't really sure he was anything at all.

He gave the flames one last questioning look before heading outside to Apparate to the Phoenix meeting; his thoughts remained on that night's supper.

Hugo watched the cloaked figure lower himself to his knees—at least, Hugo presumed it was a 'he', though their face was covered and their voice magically distorted so that they would be relatively anonymous.

Everyone in Phoenix, from the leaders to new recruits like this person, had a code name given to them by the Supreme, a man—again, gender presumed—so powerful that they were never actually seen in person; their words were passed down by lesser leaders.

It was entirely possible that the Supreme didn't actually exist, but Hugo was a fairly trusting person. There was no real reason for the leaders to lie.

His own name within the group was, for whatever reason, Brother Bear, which didn't make any sense to him but that was probably part of the reason why he wasn't a leader in Phoenix.

One of the leaders—Brother Crane—stepped towards the kneeling man, pointing his wand over the man so that a ring of fire encircled them both, separating the two from the rest of the waiting members.

"Do you, our new brother, swear loyalty, swear, to be honest, swear that you would be willing to lay down your life for the cause for which we are preparing?" Brother Crane asked the kneeling man, their voice genderless, with only the stereotypical British accent—he or she could have been anyone at all.

"I swear," said the person kneeling, looking up at Brother Crane. "I swear loyalty, I swear honesty, and I swear to lay down my life for the cause which we are preparing for. I would do anything to bring equality to the people and punish those who got away with their crimes in the Blood Wars all those years ago."

Brother Crane, lifting their wand once more, Summoned a cup full of the strange green liquid that they made every new member drink from; supposedly it tied people to Phoenix by blood.

"Then I name you Brother Griffin. Come, awake and prepare for the coming war." They turned to the other members. "Welcome, your new brother!"

The other members began to cry out welcomes to the kneeling person; Hugo added his own voice to the barrage of noise, though not as loud or as quickly or eagerly. Phoenix and some of their views still made him nervous because of how radical they could play out.

He had heard stories of how the Death Eaters and the Purity Movement started back in the 1950s and continued through the 1990s, and though he didn't think Phoenix as a whole would go so far as to torture and murder Purebloods and pro-Purists, he could also see the potential for members of Phoenix taking their ideals further than they needed to.

When the voices had fallen silent, Brother Griffin stood up, nodding towards Brother Crane and the other leaders.

"Thank you for this opportunity," he said in a calm, still voice. "I will not disappoint you."

* * *

After the celebrations had begun to wind down, Hugo looked down at his watch and noticed that it was nearly five-thirty; his family would be eating soon which meant that Mum would be revealing their big news that couldn't be shared at James party.

He was nearly out the door when Hugo felt a hand on his arm. Turning around, he recognised the recently attached griffin emblem on the other person's cloak.

"Hello, Brother Griffin," he said politely. "If you don't mind, I really have to go—I—I'm expected elsewhere soon."

"That's a shame, Brother Bear," replied Brother Griffin and Hugo reeled back in surprise, noticing that he wasn't using his voice-disguising charms. "I was hoping we could chat. I've been told you're quite an interesting person."

Brother Griffin pushed his hood back just enough that Hugo could see the outline of his narrow face—and yes, he was definitely male, with copper skin and heavy-set brown eyes.

"Mr Hugo Weasley," Brother Griffin said warmly, making Hugo gape at him. How did he know Hugo's actual name? "You will be an imperative person one day, believe me, this. Ask your cousin; she's already seen it all."

He turned to leave, but Hugo lunged forward, fingers twisting the fabric of Brother Griffin's cloak to keep him from walking away.

"Who are you?" he asked in a breathy voice.

"Me?" Brother Griffin smirked. "My name is Cerj McClane, and you would do well to remember that." With that, he cleanly pulled himself free of Hugo's grip, throwing his cloak over his face once more before disappearing into the throng of people.

* * *

The front door of his parents' house was relatively straightforward—wooden with a gold knocker in the shape of a lion's head that roared whenever someone rapped it against the frame.

Hugo had seen the door probably a million times, usually in fleeting as he threw it open and hurried inside to do whatever he wanted. Even after he'd moved out and adjusted to knocking rather than just walking in, he'd never given the door much thought.

It existed to keep out things that didn't belong and to protect those that were inside—what more was there to reflect really on?

Yet now he could focus on nothing but that stupid lion, which yawned widely at Hugo, bored by his presence. He did not want to go inside just yet because then he would have to hear his parents' bad news and that would mean acknowledging that everything was going sideways.

He wasn't ready for that just yet.

Just as Hugo let out a huge sigh, convincing himself that he should just go home and avoid the whole mess, the door was thrown open and Hugo was enveloped by his sister's frizzy red curls.

"How've you been?" she asked, pulling away to look her brother over. One might have thought they hadn't seen each other in a year rather than a mere six days.

He shrugged, stepping past her. "Nick and Mads aren't speaking to each other again. They still haven't gotten over the whole thing with Ethan." He frowned. "Nor has Lily, last I checked. She still liked him, y'know?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "That's why she cheated on him, of course, because of how much she _liked_ him."

One day Hugo was going to uncover the issue between his sister and their cousin.

"Anyway, Mum and Dad are waiting for us, so come on. Dad made a pie." She slammed the door behind her, raising her eyebrows at Hugo as they headed into the dining room. " _Cherry_ pie."

His stomach dropped; Dad usually only made cherry pie when things weren't going well. Well, it was Mum's favourite pie flavour and he always made it for Mum's birthday—otherwise, it was reserved for when they were arguing especially fiercely and he wanted to apologise.

In the dining room, Mum was sitting at the head of the table, with Dad just to her right. Hugo and Rose slipped into their usual seats—Rose by Dad and Hugo to the left of Mum.

No one said anything, the cherry pie sitting along with the rest of their supper in the centre of the table. Hugo was confident he wouldn't be able to eat even a single bite, his stomach far too busy twisting itself into knots.

Finally, it was Mum who loudly cleared her throat and looked at her two children, smiling uneasily. "Hello, you two. How are you?"

"Mum," Rose started, brow knitted. "Please, what's wrong? You guys are asking us over, Dad making a cherry pie, the way neither of you will make eye contact? Something's wrong and—and both Hu and I are adults now, so we'd appreciate it if you'd treat us as such. Whatever is going on, we can handle it."

Hugo, voice thick, added, "Even if it's divorce, we're mature enough to take care of it at this point, I promise."

Their mum shook her head. "We aren't getting divorced." She looked over at Dad, whose knuckles were white as he gripped his butter knife. "Everyone always jumps to the conclusion that we're getting divorced."

"Then what is it?" Hugo asked.

She blushed, gaze dropping to the table; it was Dad who, looking on the verge of tears—a frightening concept, since Dad _never_ cried, not since Rose's wedding—leaned towards them both.

"Do you guys remember Gran? Mum's mother?"

Rose nodded and muttered "vaguely" while Hugo only scrunched up his forehead. Gran had died when he was only five and was, therefore, a distant memory.

Dad didn't seem surprised by this in the slightest. "Yes, well, we lost her very suddenly and at a rather young age, too, even for muggles. She had a muggle illness called cancer that started in her breasts and spread through her entire body. What this means is that her cells began mutating and growing abnormally. Unfortunately, Gran and Gramps didn't catch on that she was sick before it was already far too late."

Rose and Hugo shared a look, bewildered. Hadn't they always been told that wizards couldn't pick up muggle illnesses? What did this have to do with Mum?

"Now, it is commonly believed that muggles cannot get wizard diseases or illnesses nor can a wizard get those of muggles," Mum said, unconsciously echoing their thoughts. She frowned, looking frustrated with herself. "But those who are muggleborn, like me, occasionally, show susceptibility to illnesses that afflict both types of people. Things like cancer and other awful diseases...we can acquire them through genetics despite being magical ourselves."

Rose's eyes were like saucer plates as she looked at her mother in horror. Hugo, too, thought he had a horrible, sneaking suspicious of what Mum was about to say.

"I've not been feeling my best as of late—nosebleeds, headaches, stomach bugs of a sort—and decided to consult a Healer at St Mungo. They gave me potions and sent me back home, yet my situation hadn't improved in the slightest so I chose to make an appointment with a local doctor, this one a muggleborn who works on muggle maladies for the most part."

"You have cancer!" Rose cried.

Mum nodded. "Cervical cancer, in truth. My chances are good that I will survive—more than a 50% chance, in fact, but I will need to start treatments that will leave me even sicker than I am now as well as fatigued." She sighed. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this."

Her voice was quiet, low. She was ashamed to admit her illness to them, when Mum had only ever presented herself as fierce and unstoppable.

"I've encouraged your mother to take time off of work, to maybe go part-time only, but you two know how she is." Dad shrugged, taking his wife's hand and squeezing it tightly. "Your mum's a fighter—always has been. She's not going to let _anything_ stop her from succeeding."

"Not even cancer," said Mum. She looked so strong and determined—not at all like a woman who might die at any moment.

Hugo was _definitely_ going to be sick.

* * *

At the end of the night, after he'd Apparated back to his flat but before he'd managed actually to step inside, Hugo leant against the wall of his building and let out a long sigh.

He was utterly exhausted from everything that had happened in just one day. From that weird new guy joining Phoenix, that had known Hugo's name to finding out his mum had cancer.

The only thing Hugo wanted to do no was to head inside and sleep until James' party tomorrow afternoon, but before he'd pulled himself away from the wall, Hugo heard the sound of someone breathing softly from behind him.

Turning around revealed his youngest cousin, Roxanne, standing on the top step, her head angled slightly as she stared at him.

"Rox?" Hugo stumbled backwards, shocked to see Roxy of all people outside of his building. Though they both lived only a fifteen minute walk from each other now, Hugo had not seen the girl since Lily gave birth and he'd not _spoken_ to Roxy since Christmas.

She gave him an uneasy smile, shifting from one foot to the other awkwardly. "Have you had dinner yet?" Roxy asked after a moment, leaving Hugo to gawk at her—certainly they had never been close enough to share a meal together, just the two of them, nor had Roxy ever shown any interest in him beyond being just one more cousin.

The only thing he could say in response, however, was, "It's nearly eight-thirty at night, Roxy. Haven't _you_ had dinner yet?"

This received a small shrug; she looked over her shoulder, behaving nervously as though afraid that someone was spying on them. "Long day at work, I suppose. Some days are more stressful and take longer than others. It happens occasionally."

"Rose didn't go to work today."

Not that he was accusing Roxy of lying. There would be no reason for her to do so... _except that she's a Slytherin. They lie all the time._

Don't be prejudiced, he told himself in a scolding tone. _You_ _l_ _ied about going to work to Madison today, so that makes you a hypocrite._

Roxy only continued to shift her weight back and forth as she spoke in a slow, worried tone. "I was just wondering if, perhaps, you'd noticed anything about Lily. I know you're closest of all of us to her and you would presumably know her almost as well as James and Albus—if not _better_." She chuckled, though didn't seem the least bit amused by her own words.

"Anything like what?"

"Like...weird. Guessing stuff before it happens, warning people about things, maybe making bets that she always won even though there shouldn't be any logical reason for her to do so." Roxy blushed, embarrassed by her seemingly random question.

He pondered it for a minute, trying to recall any incidents that might match what Roxy was talking about. And the more he thought about it, the more instances he could recall.

Lily always won Quidditch bets; she knew who was going to be a couple by a certain week and months, even both people hated each other; she could always correctly predict what Hugo would score on some big test or even a small piece of homework.

She'd predicted Teddy proposing to Victoire—both times. She'd predicted Albus and Scorpius getting together. She'd predicted that the youngest Longbottom child would be a girl—a full month before Madame Longbottom even realised she was pregnant!

Hugo told all of this to Roxy, who nodded solemnly, clearly having already expected Hugo's response.

"Why do you ask?" he questioned.

The young girl paused, scrunching up her nose as she carefully chose her words. "I...came across a copy of the Potter family tree recently—or, actually, back in January—that indicated that several female members of the Potter line...showed traces of Seer's blood. And—and Lily's the first Potter female to be born since the 1970s—uh, Uncle Harry has, like, a second or third cousin named Elisabeth—and I was wondering, well, if maybe Lily had that, uh, too."

"You think Lily's a Seer?" Hugo couldn't have kept the incredulity from his voice even if he'd tried to. "That she can see the future?"

"Or at least has highly diluted Seer's _blood_ ," Roxy clarified, still embarrassed. "It might have manifested itself in small ways—like winning bets about the outcomes of Quidditch games. I don't think even Lily herself is aware she can do it. Or if she is, she doesn't believe it's real."

"Uh, Rox" Hugo began nervously, feeling like his head might explode from everything that had happened today. "Have you maybe had a little too much to drink tonight? Lily is _not_ a Seer—she would have seen the outcome of her relationship with Tolkien and avoided him if that were the case, don't you think?"

"Maybe it doesn't work on big stuff like that?" she countered, frowning. "But I'm not crazy, Hugo, nor am I drunk."

"Mm."

His cousin rolled her eyes, stepping down a few steps, creating a gap between them that he had no desire to shrink at that moment. "You can call me whatever you like and try to deny the truth but eventually, you're going to have to stop lying to yourself and admit that something's up with Lily. Her very life may depend on it."

"Alright," said Hugo slowly. "Well, good-night, Rox. I will see you tomorrow for James' party. Don't stay out too late."

With that, he disappeared into the flat as quickly as possible, ignoring the flash of annoyance on Roxy's face as he shut the door.

Hugo really needed a good night's sleep.


	46. Moving along in life

Roxy cursed her luck, finding herself once more at St Mungo's. She just couldn't seem to catch a break when it came to coming here, much to her growing frustration. She truly did hate St Mungo's.

Meera Kosaraju had been found not far from Lily's room, unconscious and bleeding from a head injury. Her spine had been twisted awkwardly—unnaturally—and the Healers working on her recovery were not confident that any amount of magic would be able to repair her spine correctly. She might be paralysed for life, her body warped by dark magic that no one could correctly identify.

Roy sat at the end of Meera's bed, holding the thirty-three year old's hands in her own. She gave her friend a small smile, wishing she could think of something to say that would make everything better; Roxy could come up with nothing but her own desires to rip Meera's attackers limbs off, but she figured that wouldn't make the woman happier.

"At least I'm alive," Meera said calmly, her body propped up by pillows since she herself could no longer move enough to pull herself into a sitting position.

"But you don't remember who attacked you? Not even anything a little fuzzy. We could—we could talk to Aniya and see if she would be able to pull anything from your memories if you think you could recall even the smallest detail."

Meera shook her head. "Whoever attacked me did a good job of locking all the doors behind them, so to speak. The Healer already did a check on my mental capacity and whoever accosted me erased all recollection of everything that happened."

"That's disgusting." Roxy wrinkled her nose. "Is there _anything_ we can do? I don't like the idea of just sitting here and watching you recover yet not being able to bring that monster to justice."

The ex-Healer made a movement that might have been a shrug if she could still move her spine. "I couldn't tell you whether that's the right thing to do or not, but I do think I must urge you to stay on track with everything that we've been working on rather than chasing after one more endless path that may lead to only more suffering."

Roxy looked down at her clasped hands, a burning anger raging deep inside of her. Though Meera was not acting overly upset by it all, Roxy could not personally find it within herself to be so mature. She wanted to hunt down whoever had done this to her friend and make them hurt in the same way that Meera was hurting now.

Instead, Roxy shook her head slowly. "I'm still focused on all the ghosts and the Faceless One but that doesn't mean I can't get upset about someone who would do such a terrible thing to you. People—no, _monsters—_ shouldn't be allowed to get away with what they did and I don't understand how you can be so calm about it all. They destroyed your _spine._ You won't ever walk again and yet all you can say is not to focus on it?"

Meera leant forwards as far as her upper spine would allow as she strengthened her grip on Roxy's hands. "Please, Roxy, I'm on the road to recovery—as much as I will ever be able to recover—and stopping my attacker when we have no way of finding them simply should not be our primary focus at this point, do you understand?"

"Fine. I don't like it, but I'll leave the matter alone—for now, at least."

"That's all I ask of you."

* * *

Later that week, Roxy had returned to digging through the mountain of paperwork, which was very slowly being organised into something more comprehensible than just stacks upon stacks of two and a half decades worth of information. Finally, her room was becoming de-cluttered.

It was in the midst of this that Roxy stumbled across a copy of the family tree that she'd seen at the DoM, though this version had been updated to at least include James, Albus, and Lily, whose little portraits waved cheerfully at Roxy.

Again, her eyes were drawn to the markings next to Lily and more than a dozen other women's names. Surely this had to mean something—Lily didn't just have Seer's blood for no reason, not when her name was marked where others had been left blank.

"Lily can see the future, I _know_ it," Roxy said to herself, staring down a the family tree as though, by looking at it intently enough, the parchment would give her all the answers she was seeking. "The Ministry wants her for something and I highly doubt that it has to do anything with how charming and polite she is."

She frowned, recalling all the times that Lily had made some offhand comment—like that Roxy and Kieran would start dating by their last year at Hogwarts—which might have, at the time, merely seemed like she really knew Roxy's relationships, though in retrospect, Lily had never met Kieran in her life and Roxy had been a second year when Lily told her that, so Roxy couldn't have possibly shown any interest in him for Lily to base her guess off of.

And there were other times, too, like when she'd gotten agitated leading up to the weeks before Roxy started Hogwarts, one time going so far as to hand her younger cousin a Slytherin-green scarf and ask if Roxy liked that colour.

Lily had, so far, accurately guessed the gender of all four of the Weasley great-grandchildren—as she confessed to Roxy in a letter following her birthday announcement that she'd never officially had sex of her baby checked by a Healer or midwife.

Lily simply just knew things that she shouldn't have ever been able to figure out on her own if she were like any normal person. It wasn't plausible unless one were to account for the probability of Lily having Seer's blood.

But there was one person in the world who knew Lily probably even better than she knew herself: Hugo, who, along with Lily, had one of the closest relationships amongst all the Weasley cousins. If anyone had noticed the weird stuff she could do over the years, it would most certainly be Hugo.

Roxy was going to have to pay him a visit.

* * *

She scowled into her Butterbeer, watching as her cousin made an absolute fool of himself. Though, Roxy supposed to herself, it was _James'_ party and _James'_ girlfriend, so if he was going to be an idiot, that was all on him.

Currently, he was following Caroline around, frantically whispering into her ear. Roxy wondered if he'd screwed something up and was trying to make things up to her. If so, James was being even dumber than usual—Caroline was the best girlfriend he'd ever had and James would really suffer if he lost her because of his own stupid mistakes.

Lily, just released from St Mungo's that morning, was sitting next to Roxy. She narrowed her eyes, watching as Caroline spun around and said something in a low, hushed tone to James, arms covering her chest. She looked close to tears.

"James asked Caroline to marry her," Lily said listlessly, still watching her brother. "She said no, though—they've only been dating for four months, after all, most rational people would say no. But they haven't broken up yet, at least. Caroline loves him a lot even if she isn't quite ready for marriage."

Roxy turned to look at Lily. "Did Caroline tell you that?" she asked the redhead.

"No." Lily's voice was devoid of any emotion, her face blank. "I saw it." She slowly shifted her stare towards Roxy, looking at her with empty eyes. "Same as how I saw you tell Hugo last night that I have Seer's blood. You think I can see things that are going to happen."

It was not a question.

"Do you believe me?" Roxy queried.

Again moving very slowly, Lily nodded. "I didn't, though, right up until a dream I had a few days ago that was far more vivid than any dream should ever be. I don't understand it and I don't like it but I accept the truth now. I can see the future. I'm one of those weird kids that the Ministry is hunting down. I'm a special little snowflake."

"Someone attacked Meera," Roxy blurted. "The Healers said she probably won't ever walk again—she was hurt by really dark magic. No one even recognises the spells they used on her."

"I know. They found her outside of my room after all, and I got moved because one of the Healers though the attacker might try to go after me next. It doesn't take a Seer to put all that together and know something atrocious happened."

On the other side of the yard, James had stopped entirely, solemnly watching Caroline make her way over to where Rayna—Louis' long-time girlfriend—and Jenna—Albus' best friend—were chatting. She didn't look back at James, who eventually slumped off to find something to drink that was a little stronger than Butterbeer.

Lily watched her brother go, eyes gleaming. "She's going to say yes in a couple of months when he asks her again. They'll get married. Thomas says they'll have three kids."

"Who's Thomas?"

"Er—" Lily blushed, her emotionless demeanour dropping long enough for Roxy to see the confusion on her face. "He's no one you've met. Yet," she muttered.

"I could show you the Potter family tree if you want," Roxy offered in a forced casual voice, feeling the need to change the subject. "Uncle Harry does actually have a few distant relatives—second cousins of some sort and the like. I—I mean, I could show you if you're interested."

The redhead shrugged, now watching Caroline say something to Rayna, who laughed and clapped the other girl on the shoulder.

"It might help me...understand things better." She looked over at Roxy out of the corner of her eyes. "Seeing isn't all about what's to come, apparently. Sometimes it's more like what's happened already, especially if I'm holding something old and full of history. It's like...I'm Seeing into the past, living out someone else's memories and experiences."

Roxy gawked at the older girl, in quite a bit of awe despite her reservations about the whole thing. She'd never really believe in Divination or prophecies despite everything that had happened with Uncle Harry, but sitting next to someone who could actually tap into those powers—it was mind-boggling, to say the least.

"Th others will think I'm crazy," Lily admitted in a quiet voice, looking almost—scared? "Rose, Scorpius, Tilly—even Albus will doubt me, even just a little bit. I keep seeing it play out, them telling me I'm out of my mind, that Divination simply isn't real. It's like—like now that I've accepted this gift that I have, I'm always bombarded with flashes of the future of the past what feels like literally all the time. I can close my eyes and watch him die over and over and over..."

"Watch _who_ die?" Roxy was frightened by the far away look in her cousin's eyes.

Lily shook her head firmly, seeming to come back into focus as she gave Roxy an empty, meaningless smile. "Roxy, I've received a terrible gift. A terrible, awful gift, do you understand?"

"N-no?"

"Lily! Roxy!" Lucy strode across the Potters' backyard, holding little William Lupin in her arms. She stopped in front of the two girls, beaming. "Aunt Fleur is having me carry Will around to get used to the weight," she explained, hefting him higher in her arms. "Did you know they're letting me take Ruby home on Monday? I've got to get everything set up at Grandmum Molly's for now because my personal Healer doesn't think I'm ready to be by myself just yet and my sister doesn't want a baby staying at her place, but I'm so excited! I'm actually a _mum_ now, a real _mum_!"

Lily gave her a tight-lipped smile. "Yes, how lucky for you to have such an honour, Lucy," she replied coolly.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity, Lils," Lucy said honestly, leaning over to kiss Lily on the forehead. "And when you meet the one of your dreams and have the babies that you're ready for, I know you'll make for one fantastic mother yourself."

Lucy might as well have slapped Lily for as red-faced and angered as the younger girl looked at that moment, not that Lucy seemed to have noticed.

Roxy, not wanting to witness a fight, gave Lucy a warning look. "I think Lily and I might get something to drink," she said, helping Lily to her feet and ushering the girl over to the refreshments table. "Bye, Lucy!" she called over her shoulder.

"Bye-bye." Lucy wandered off, humming softly to Will.

"She means well," Roxy said apologetically, but Lily only rolled her eyes and looked away, biting her bottom lip.

"Ruby's going to find out the truth in the future," the redhead suddenly confessed. "When she's about eleven or twelve, she figures out that I'm her real mum and she absolutely hates me for it."

"Oh."

Roxy couldn't think of anything else to say, so she grabbed two cups of Firewhiskey and handed one to Lily. They both took long sips, feeling the burning sensation that came from the strong drink, but it certainly helped to calm the situation, as Roxy could feel the alcohol already working, making her feel light, as though nothing were wrong with the world at that moment.

"Anything else I should know?" Roxy asked jokingly.

"Aunt Hermione has cancer."

* * *

"Lucy, dear, why don't you put the crib here?" Grandmum said, watching the girl shove Ruby's furniture back and forth. "And be sensible about it, if you please, a simple Levitating Charm to avoid scraping the floor."

"Oh." Lucy smiled sheepishly, waving her wand. "Sorry, Gran."

All of Lucy's and Ruby's items lifted off the ground, floating a few centimetres off the ground so that they would now be easily pushed around without damaging the wood. Lucy turned to face Grandmum with a big grin, arms stretched out wide as she let out a giddy chuckle.

"Everything's solved now," she said cheerfully. "I'm an absolute genius." Lucy laughed again, looking around with childlike eagerness at the room that would be hers for as long as she liked.

Grandmum Molly smiled gently. "Do you and Roxy need help moving everything around?" The Weasley matriarch craned her neck to look at her youngest grandchild, who held ten days old Ruby in her arms while Lucy took a moment longer to continue running her hands over everything.

Lucy, also flashing a quick glance at Roxy, then turned to scan her eyes over the room, humming thoughtfully as she took it all in. "No, I think we can manage this ourselves," she decided, looking over at Roxy once more.

The younger girl merely shrugged.

Their grandmother leant over to take the newborn from Roxy's arms, which she gladly handed over, pretty sure that the smells emanating from Ruby's diaper weren't completely natural baby odours, though she certainly didn't want to find out first-hand. Roxy was alright with not changing nappies.

"Oh, you stink!" cried Grandmum jovially, bouncing the infant in her arms as the two of them headed downstairs, leaving Roxy and Lucy to push the furniture into place and take off the Levitating Charms so that they dropped back to the floor with a small thud.

The two girls worked quickly, setting the furniture to their correct spot until everything was set and lowered.

Lucy's bed pulled from the flat she'd shared with her sister, was pushed under the window so that sunlight streamed in and landed on her pillow. Ruby's crib was pushed against the opposite wall, complete with a little green blanket covered in magizoological animals, containing little blue dragons that pranced across the cloth and chased after golden unicorn foals.

Other than that, she had a wooden desk and a rolling chair—"I know it's muggle, but I love this chair so much,"—as well as a cupboard for her and Ruby's clothing, a toy bin for the baby, and two bookshelves that Roxy waved her wand at to bolt it into the floor.

A little radio had been placed on the windowsill; all the clothes, toys, and books were set to their proper location with a muttered spell.

Lucy, letting out a happy sigh, tossed herself onto the bed, bouncing slightly before she settled on the honey yellow sheets. "I like it here," she announced happily. "And I think Gran is glad I'm here, too. I suppose, with all of us grandchildren growing up and only Vic really having kids herself at this point, she was becoming desperate for someone to coddle."

"She's nearly _eighty_ ," Roxy replied, shaking her head in disbelief. "If _I_ were eighty, I'd tell my grandchildren to screw off and raise their own kids far away from me. That's assuming I have any grandchildren in the first place."

This made Lucy laugh.

She had been acting especially gleeful all morning, unhindered by yesterday's Sunday dinner announcement regarding Aunt Hermione's health—and it always Sundays when these sorts of things happened! Perhaps they would stop having bad news if they stopped getting together every Sunday for dinner.

Or perhaps Roxy just felt the tradition was getting a little tiresome.

"I can't imagine Gran ever passing away." Lucy rolled onto her side so that could see Roxy, who was now sitting in the rolling desk chair. "She feels like one of those people who'll live forever, doesn't she? Like she's immortal."

"Like how Auntie Muriel was?"

"Yeah...but in a good way. Like...I dunno, the Queen. You never think she'll die, even as old as she was, until one day you've reached the inevitable and can't figure out how you ever got there."

"Morbid." Roxy spun herself around in a tight circle, watching the world turn into a multi-coloured blur for a few seconds. When her eyes focused once more, Lucy shrugged at her.

"I dunno," the older girl said slowly. "I'll be sad when Gran dies, though. I feel like...we probably won't meet up as much as a family any more when she's gone."

"Too many people and no connecting factor pushing us all together."

"Exactly."

They fell into thoughtful silence for a few moments, contemplating the bleak future of a world without Molly Weasley. So strong was her presence in their life that they could hardly imagine such a dark possibility happening any time soon.

"Ruby's so cute," Lucy blurted, then blushed at her own sudden outburst. "If my head were a little more red...but she looks like she could be mine, doesn't she? Like I could be her birth mother? What do you think, Rox?"

Roxy didn't have the heart to tell her cousin what Lily had said about Ruby finding out the truth when she was older, so instead she faked a bright tone and replied, "She totally could be your daughter, Lucy. Besides, when would that question ever actually come up? You're her _mum—_ she won't want to go hunting for the truth when she's got someone as wonderful as you raising her."

The lie left a strangely bitter taste in Roxy's mouth. She swallows, wishing it would go away, wishing Lucy wouldn't beam at her so happily like that.

* * *

The next time she saw the rest of her family—with Teddy and Uncle Harry having been on an Auror mission since the day after Lily gave birth, Aunt Hermione seeking treatment with a muggle doctor, and Aunt Fleur and Uncle Bill on holiday—was on the second of May.

Everything in the wizarding community was shut down for the day except Gringotts—the goblins did not honour the second—and St Mungo's, in case something went wrong and someone needed medical assistance, which had apparently happened during the fifth anniversary when neo-Death Eaters attempted to stage a comeback.

Otherwise, everyone who was able gathered in one of two places—students and staff at Hogwarts for their own ceremony and everyone else who wasn't school-aged or lived nearby the school at the Ministry's celebration. Since it wasn't a decade or half-decade celebration, Uncle Harry gave his speech at the Ministry this year, talking about the importance of keeping the world safe from prejudice and intolerance. Aunt Hermione and a few other people that Roxy recognised also spoke, each grim and pale-faced yet with words full of determination.

She stood next to the rest of the Weasley-Potters, listening as Minister Shacklebolt stood up to talk about the value of the lives that were lost more than thirty years ago, reading each one by name and inviting any surviving family to speak in their honour.

Andromeda Tonks spoke for her husband and daughter while Teddy talked about the father he never knew. Daisy Sprout, the eldest child of ex-Professor Pomona Sprout, told the crowd about losing her twin sister, Dandy. Megan Hopkins, who had apparently lost her mother and all three of her younger siblings, held up her two week old granddaughter as a reminder that they could not let the stories of the dead fade away with each passing year.

And then it came time for Fred Weasley's name to be called. Until Dad's death, that had always been _his_ job, as Uncle Fred's twin, the one person who knew him best in the world. For the past few years, that role had been overtaken by Roxy's mum.

This year, the family asked Roxy to get up and deliver a speech about an uncle she'd never met before and whom she only knew from what others had said about him over the years. She, understandably, was feeling more than a little panicked to get in front of all those people and talk about someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a total stranger to her.

"You can do it, Roxanne," Mum said, gently pushing her towards the front of the crowd, where Minister Shacklebolt was waiting for Roxy. "Just remember the speech you and I wrote together and remain confident."

Roxy nodded, the pages held tightly in her grip as she walked up the steps to where the Minister was, one hand held out to help her towards the podium. She took the proffered hand gratefully, legs trembling as she turned to face the crowd.

There were a _lot_ of people.

"Hello," she began cautiously, her voice echoing loudly by the Sonorous Charm placed on the podium. "My name is—is Roxanne Weasley. I-I'm Fred Weasley's youngest niece and the only daughter of his twin brother, George Weasley." Roxy gulped, glancing down at the prepared script. "I...I never met my uncle—n-nor did any of my other cousins since he died before all of us were born—and so, I only ever got to meet Uncle Fred through pictures and stories. When I was little, my dad liked to entertain me with one particular story, of—of how he and Uncle Fred broke out of school using Peeves the Poltergeist, confiscated broomsticks, and a hell of a lotof fireworks. Then Mum would conclude the story by adding that I wasn't allowed to do any of that myself."

The audience laughed and in the crowd, she saw Mum giving her a thumbs up and a quirked grin, indicating for her to continue.

"My uncle was one of the many casualties in the battle thirty-one years ago—a fight that, as the history books taught me, was ended by a different uncle of mine, Harry Potter, even if he likes to pretend otherwise. Because of this war, my Uncle Fred died at twenty years old. That means he never got to see twenty-one, he never got married or had the opportunity to choose not to, he never had kids, and he never got to see a company—which was fifty percent his—succeed more wildly than seventeen year old Fred and George Weasley could have imagined it would when they first signed the lease on their shop building in 1996."

She took another deep breath, glancing down at her speech paper one last time.

"But I did not climb up here to comment merely on everything that we lost thirty-one years ago because this is not just a day of mourning." She gave the crowd a nervous smile. "It is also a day to celebrate the end of an era of tyranny, the toppling of a Dark Lord who had been a threaten since the 1970s and one he'd built up for twenty years preceding that. Lord Voldemort, for my generation, has become what Grindlewald was to my parents and grandparents—a distant threat. But that should not be the case. We should not let the crimes of the Death Eaters becoming something of the distant past because to do so is to forget the sacrifices of people like my uncle. And I know that someone like Uncle Fred, he of grand schemes and even more grandiose dreams, would like never to be forgotten. So, please, in honour of Uncle Fred and all those who died, do not forget why we are gathered here today. Do not forget what that battle was fought for. Do not forget why we fight even now, for a better tomorrow for my generation and for every generation to come."

With that, as Roxy stepped away from the podium, a firework shot into the air over her head, exploding into the shape of a scene from the Battle of Hogwarts—the form of people with sparkling wands against that of giants and skeletal figures.

The crowd applauded while Roxy thanked Minister Shacklebolt for allowing her to speak. He was mildly stunned still from the fireworks, caught off guard, and did not initially acknowledge her outstretched hand.

"I was not warned of that lovely little stunt," he told Roxy, all while giving her a warm, if dazed, smile and shaking her hand. "You truly are Fred Weasley's niece—and George Weasley's daughter."

"Thank you, sir," she said and headed down the stairs to where the rest of her family was waiting, all giving her a mixture of baffled and amused looks. Only James leant over to give her a high five, having been the one to set up the fireworks in the first place, along with Roxy.

"Very well said, Rox," Uncle Harry expressed in a complimentary way, making Roxy beam at him. He ruffled her curls affectionately. "You may be tired of hearing this, but you are very much like your father in many ways. He was smart, too, and well spoken."

Roxy nodded, ducking past him to where Lily and Lucy were, shouldering her way between them so that the three girls were standing side by side. Lucy took Roxy's hand and squeezed it gently to remind the younger girl tha they were on her side every single day, every step of the way.

"He _is_ proud of you," Lucy told her, whispering into Roxy's ear so that no one could hear her over the sound of the next guest speaker. "He thinks your thing with the fireworks was really bright."

"Is he here?" Roxy turned around, craning her head as though she might be able to see the ghostly form of her father standing on Lucy's other side, just waiting for Roxy to notice him so he could give that familiar grin and ask Roxy all about her day.

"You can't see him. He doesn't have the strength for ordinary people to do so—but he's here." She pointed half a metre in front of them, where a gap in the crowd had formed, large enough for an adult male to fit comfortably. "He says that he's sorry for what happened and he wishes he could take it all back if given the chance to do it again. He says it was selfish of him, what happened."

"I know," Roxy murmured, looking towards where Roxy had pointed. "I know it was really hard for you. I don't blame you."

"He says thank you." Lucy leant against Roxy, nearly collapsing. "He says he loves you."

"I love him, too."

Lily took Roxy's other hand, squeezing it tightly. With the only remaining free hand between the three of them, Lily brushed away the tears that threatened to fall down her younger cousin's face, murmuring comfortingly as Roxy took in a noisy gulp of air to calm herself down.

"He can't stay any longer," Lucy said sadly before nearly falling into Roxy and Lily's arms as she suddenly went limp. Her whole face was pale and the other two girls shared concerned looks, hoping Lucy wasn't about to faint in a public area. Luckily, the girl instead patted their hands as though to assure them that she was okay and let out a heavy sigh.

"Wait," Lucy muttered, frowning in the direction of the floor. "What about that book of yours? Have you looked at it recently, Rox?"

"The book?" Roxy gave her cousin a puzzled glance. "Which one? There're quite a number of books at my flat."

"James Potter gave you a book, don't you remember? It was going to help us figure everything out about the Faceless One. Did you read it yet?"

"How did you know about that?"

Lucy smiled coyly at her, still looking peaky. "Who do you think told me about it?" Roxy gawked at Lucy, bewildered. "I'd suggest you hurry and check it before anyone else figures out you've got possession of that sort of thing."

Yes, Roxy thought to herself. She needed to find James Potter's book.


	47. The secrets of the book

_Historia Sancti._

Roxy opened the book slowly, admiring its gold-edges pages and intricately carved back cover; the title of the book had been discovered after ten blank pages and written in very small script with no listed author anywhere to be found.

It told the story of the first known ghost sighting by the first recorded wizard in history, Wi'zed, who wrote that he had seen the ghost of his third eldest son roughly three days after the youth passed away. The other members of the family were also noted to have seen him in the following years, standing silently in rooms or following them around with an outstretched hand.

There was an entire chapter dedicated to the kinds of ghosts—poltergeists, spectres, ghouls—and how they were made. Often, those who died at a relatively young age became poltergeists, their youthful energy from a stolen life channelled into mischievous behaviour while those who'd taken their own lives or died in an especially tragic way became ghouls, bemoaning their bad luck from when they were still alive.

Roxy flipped to the third chapter, which recorded a history of famous witches and wizards who'd come back—some of whom only became famous for _being_ a ghost, such as someone named Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, who'd resided at Hogwarts for over five hundred years.

 _No muggle has ever come back to visit the realm of the living once they have crossed the Veil. Whether this is because such a fate is unavailable to them, being too difficult to achieve, or if it is simply the case that no muggle has ever taken such an option, assuming that it is presented to them in the first place, of course._

She had to read through that portion three times to understand the point—that all ghosts were, as far as anyone knew, inherently magical creatures.

Other sections of James Potter's strange book—which was much thicker than it seemed at first glance—included stories of bemused ghosts startling muggles, a first-hand account of ghost-hood, and a three centuries old explanation for why not all wizards who died became ghosts— _now updated for the modern reader!_ according to the book.

Roxy spent a full three days reading through the book over and over until she could recite entire passages from memory; then, when the fourth day began, she took to copying pages down by hand endlessly until she had a full box of parchment sitting on the corner of her desk, her fingers stained with ink.

One might have thought her mad for the way that she behaved, not eating or showering, nor sleeping. Each day, she would stumble into work with deepened shadows under her eyes, looking close to collapsing.

She made mistakes, bringing around the wrong ingredients, stumbling over nothing while she walked, mumbling all of her sentences. Whenever a free moment was to be found, Roxy was drawn immediately back to the book to begin anew her obsession.

Aniya and Jo worried after her, first trying to steal the book away from her and then by forcing her into bed, forcing food into her hands, forcing her into the shower, all so that she did not get sick from her insane behaviour.

At work, Aniya would follow Roxy around, making sure she was not about to fall over. Aniya fixed Roxy's mistakes, switching out ingredients so they weren't given to the wrong people, keeping Roxy on her feet, clarifying what she was saying whenever someone didn't understand her mumbling.

She was doing the job of two people and ran herself just as ragged as Roxy had become. They were both going to drop soon in something didn't change.

It was at this point, realising that an 'adult figure' needed to step in, Aniya and Jo chose to approach Rose, asking her to knock some sense into the youngest Weasley before she did some serious damage to herself or to anyone else.

* * *

Rose craned her head around the wall of Roxy's work station, made uncomfortable as she found herself once more in the interns area, where she had no been for nearly three years.

"Hey," she called softly, making Roxy jump and look up guiltily from the stack of notes she'd been scribbling for the last two hours.

"What're you here for? I thought most of the older staff never came in the interns' section."

Rose shrugged, not quite sure why she had agreed to come in here, either. "I skipped much of my interning. Maybe I just wanted to see what I missed, you know?" She tried to give Roxy an amused smile, but it came across more strained than anything else.

Roxy pushed her notes to the other side of the table, trying to keep it out of sight; the rational part of her brain would have seen Rose give her behaviour a worried glance, but the rational side had long been overrun by the obsession she had concerning James Potter's odd book.

"You've never stopped by before."

"My sincerest apologies, then. But your friends asked me to look after you because they're more than a little worried about your well-being—and to be completely honest, I'm worried about you as well."

"Why? I'm perfectly fine—I'm eating properly, sleeping four hours a night, engaging in socialisation. I don't know why you're all worried about me so much." Her eyes darted around the room as she spoke and there was a flush to Roxy's face as though she'd just finished running a great distant.

Even her voice made it apparent everything was _not_ fine, as it cracked with tension and dropped in volume so that she was barely even speaking at a whisper by the end of her statement.

"Roxy—"

"I'm fine!" the girl insisted, chest heaving. There was a glint in her eyes. "This is just like when Dad died! I was fine then and I'm fine now, so stop stressing so much over me, for Merlin's sake! Nothing is wrong except for the constant hovering everyone keeps doing— _that's_ the only thing that's really bothering me at this point!"

"They said you have some sort of book about ghosts and such that you're obsessing over and—"

"'They'? Who's 'they'? Can you trust 'them' not to be spying on me? Can you ensure that 'they' aren't just here to steal everything I've learned—all my notes and the copies and even the book itself. I mean, who is 'they'? What do they want with me?"

Rose blinked, bewildered by her cousin's suddenly frenzied behaviour. "I was referring to your friends, Aniya Lamb and Joanna Bartley. Those two have expressed their growing concerns that your obsession with this book is becoming overwhelming and is a detriment to your health."

"Oh." With that, Roxy collapsed into her seat and began sobbing quietly, now making Rose feel intensely uncomfortable. She was not good with emotions, preferring for people to stay rational, logical machines that did as expected of them; Rose had never been the one to go to when something went poorly.

She moved to pat Roxy on the back, making awkward soothing noises as the younger girl continued to cry, the mental breakdown that Aniya had anticipated finally coming to a head. Roxy was not going to stop crying until there was nothing left inside of her to cry.

"I-I-I'll go get Aniya, shall I?" Rose muttered after a few minutes, backing away from Roxy. "She understands all of this better than I do so I'll just, er, I'll just go, okay? Er...yeah."

She took off in search of Aniya, who had noticed Rose disappear into Roxy's cubicle earlier and not come out for a length of time and therefore was waiting at the entrance of her own work station. She met Rose half-way, briefly chatting to the older girl before they parted once more—Rose to her office and Aniya towards the still crying Roxy.

She knelt down in front of her friend, conjuring some tissues and filling up a cup with water, pointing her wand in the direction of an empty phial so that it transformed into a little plastic cup.

"Are you okay, Roxy?" Aniya murmured comfortingly, wiping off the tears that had stained Roxy's shirt. "Do you want to talk things out? Maybe...maybe it's healthy to take a break from your book for a little while. After all, your cousin's wedding is on Saturday and you don't want to be a nervous wreck the whole time, right?"

this seemed to have some impact on Roxy, who shook her head, though her face still remained hidden behind the robe collars she'd pulled up.

"And it's important to Albus that you're fine for his wedding, just like how it's important to us that you're fine because you're our friend and we want to ensure your health and safety. That book is trashing your health and it's messing up your mind. As much benefit as we might get from looking through it, nothing can be worth losing you. Besides, can't we all read through it and make our own conclusions along with you?"

"But he gave that book to _me_ to read through it and keep it safe. That makes it my responsibility to look through it and comprehend what it says so I can tell you everything and ensure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands." Roxy's voice was muffled through her robes.

"That's not true, though!" Aniya leant up to pull Roxy's hands from her robe, but the other girl jerked away. "The Circle's here to help you with everything, even something like this. Ho one wants you to drive yourself into the ground for this—or anything else! Please, all I'm asking is that you take care of yourself."

She pulled at Roxy's hands once more, this time successfully separating the girl from her clothes so that Roxy's tear-stained face was revealed. Aniya used the rest of her tissues to pat down Roxy's face, cleaning off the streaks of wet lines that stretched from the corner of her eyes to the tips of either side of her jaw.

"You're going to be okay, Roxy," she whispered, pulling her friend into a hug. "I'm going to make sure you're okay, do you understand me?"

Roxy, like a rag doll that had lost all its stuffing, nodded limply.

"Good. Now I'm taking you to lunch and you will not argue with me or try to get out of eating everything. You need to be healthy again."

* * *

The following night, looking far more relaxed and healthy than she had twenty-four hours earlier after spending the evening hanging out with her friends far away from the book, Roxy found herself standing in front of a mirror at Molly's flat, hands nervously twisting the fabric of her bridesmaid dress.

Albus' wedding was the day after next and since the younger five Weasley cousins were all participating as bridesmaids, they had agreed to meet at Molly's place for any last minute adjustments to their dresses.

Albus, playing the role of the groom who was okay with dipping into stereotypes, had cheerfully encouraged his cousins to maintain the 'bride' part of their title as well as asking his best friend Jenna to be the maid of honour. The rest of the wedding party was made up of the two grooms male friends from their Hogwarts days.

They had almost convinced James and Louis to also wear a dress, but neither had actually chosen to go ahead with the plan, unfortunately.

Faith would be the flower girl along with Lyra and Petra, Scorpius' sisters; Remy would be the ring bearer, though it would actually be James who would hand the rings to the couple since Remy kept crying during their rehearsals any time he had to stand still for more than a few minutes.

Again, to twist tradition to be a bit more accommodating, Albus and Scorpius would each be having a dance with their respective mothers before sharing the first dance with each other. It was all rather romantic.

"What do you think, Rox?" Victoire asked, brushing out the wrinkles in Roxy's skirt. "Is it not _magnifique_? I designed the dresses myself, of course—how embarrassing would that be, not designing the clothes for my own cousin's wedding?" She threw a glance in Rose's direction; the redhead had very emphatically made it clear during her wedding preparations two years ago that her dress, along with Hannai's, would be muggle since they were having a muggle ceremony to accommodate Hannai's family, which meant Victoire would not be in charge of making the dress.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about," said Rose dryly, adjusting her sleeves.

"I think the dresses look lovely," Roxy told her eldest cousin, smiling.

It was true, she _did_ like the bridesmaids' dresses, which went down to just past the knee with a cinched shirt and a loose top that made Roxy look like she almost had wings rather than arms. Along with this were a pair of strappy sandals—the theme of the wedding was something about a guy named Icarus from Greece. Roxy assumed it was some weird muggle who thought he could fly but never bothered to try a broom.

"At least someone appreciates all my hard work," Victoire said, then snapped her fingers at the younger girls. "Alright, I've made all the adjustments I need, so you can take everything off until Saturday, please."

Lily, who'd been staring forlornly down at her still slightly extended stomach, quickly peeled off her outfit and gave it to Victoire, looking displeased.

"You're almost back to your proper weight, Lils," Victoire told her consolingly—or, at least, in what would have been a consoling and comforting tone if Victoire had personally taken only a few weeks to shed all the weight from her pregnancy both times and, even at twenty-nine, was a slim and beautiful person.

"At least it wasn't twins," Rose interjected. She did not sound like she was trying to be comforting at all. "I hear it takes nearly twice as long to lose the weight of two babies. And Ruby was on the smaller side, too, wasn't she? So there wasn't much weight to lose anyway—at least, not the weight that was directly contributed by the baby itself."

Victoire gave Rose a scornful look and smacked her shoulder lightly. "Don't be petty, Rosalind. It isn't cute or endearing."

The younger girl stuck her tongue out and peeled her own dress off, also handing it to Victoire before placing her sandals back in their box. "How fast did you lose your pregnancy weight with Remy or Will?" she asked; Victoire only rolled her eyes and turned away.

Molly held out her hand to take Roxy's dress, which she quickly slipped out of and handed off to the other girl with a grateful smile. Lucy, last to undress, finally stopped admiring herself in the mirror so she could give them her clothes as well.

"We're going to look so pretty on Saturday," Lucy said dreamily, clasping her hands tightly like a character from some trashy romance film. "We could be like a line of angels being escorted down the aisle by handsome men, with everyone around to see us."

"One of those _handsome men_ is Scorpius' half-brother, did you know that?" Lily interjected as the girls finished putting their regular clothes back on.

"He has a half-brother?"

Lily nodded, smirking happily as she had found herself at the centre of attention. "He's only fourteen months younger than Scorpius. His name's Reuben."

"Wasn't he that Slytherin boy you dated for several months in your fourth year? The one you said that you drank a lot with and slept with?" Roxy asked.

"Perhaps." Lily shrugged nonchalantly, though Roxy could see the tips of her ears burn red. "All I really know that's of any actual interest is that he was raised by his grandmother until he was a seventh year when she finally told him about his real mum. I don't think he and Scorpius have ever gotten along too well, but their Mum set up his being in the wedding and I suppose they have to play nice for her sake."

"Interesting." Lucy pursed her lips thoughtfully and looked away.

"Mrs Malfoy's not the only cheater in the family, though," Victoire added as she wrapped their dresses up carefully and placed everything back in its box. "Mr Malfoy has two kids outside of the marriage as well—Asterion Parkinson, who was in the same year as Molly and Danielle Rivers, who was a Slytherin in Lucy and Louis' year. Scorpius has more siblings than most people know about. I think the Malfoy family likes to keep their infidelities under wraps."

"But Scorpius is still the heir, isn't he? Even though Asterion would be older?"

"Well, Scorpius _is_ the only legitimately first-born male so unless Mr Malfoy decides to buck tradition, which I doubt he will, then yeah, Scorpius will get the houses and the Wizengamot seat as well as most of the money."

Roxy sighed to herself while her cousins talked; she could feel her hands shaking fiercely. She'd not looked at anything related to book in over twenty-four hours, having handed everything over to Aniya and now—a bit like someone suffering from withdrawal from drugs—she couldn't stop shaking or thinking about running back to her flat to pour through her notes until Roxy couldn't even remember her own name.

All she wanted to do was read the book over and over to the point where she was capable of reciting the entire thing from memory in her sleep. She couldn't stop mentally running through all of her notes and theories, her thoughts pulled away from everything else that was going on.

"Are you okay, Roxy?" Lucy asked, tilting her head and helpfully the younger girl away from her obsessive behaviour. "You're looking a bit peaky. Are you getting sick? That'd be terrible, getting ill right before the wedding."

Roxy shook her head, trying to draw herself back into the conversation, which had somehow jumped from Scorpius' siblings to talking about whether or not Molly had any intentions of ever marrying her long-term boyfriend.

"I'm just saying that you and Peter have been together for more than a decade. You've done everything a married couple does—you live together, sleep together, pay taxes together; doesn't it just make sense for you two to finally get married? Marriage isn't any real big deal—it only just makes things more official and besides, you get to wear a pretty dress and be the centre of attention for the day." Victoire frowned, giving Molly a puzzled look.

"I guess we just aren't interested in 'officiating' everything right now," Molly responded coolly. "Certainly rushing into a marriage at twenty-one years of age may be suitable for _some_ of us, but it is not the only way to go about things."

"Well, neither a rusher nor twenty-one are you any more," Victoire practically snarled back. "Next, I suppose, you'll say that twenty-four is too early to be having children?"

"Again, perhaps not for all of us."

Lucy leant in to whisper to Roxy, "I think Molly and Vic are mad at each other about something again. Do you think something's happened with Peter?"

Roxy shrugged. Molly and Peter Bartoli had been dating for as long as she could remember—there weren't a whole lot of memories of Molly where Peter _wasn't_ around by her side, so the idea of the couple that had been together for more than twelve years having suddenly split up felt quite preposterous; though the notion of them tying the knot also was unlikely.

Perhaps Molly and Vic were just arguing because of something small, like Molly not being enthusiastic about getting dolled up for Al's wedding. It wouldn't be the first time they'd starting ranting at each other about a completely unrelated issue altogether.

Lily also moved closer to Roxy and Lucy, bending her neck slightly to quietly mutter, "Peter's been trying to propose to Molly for several months now, with Vic's help of course. They were hoping the wedding fever would get to her, being surrounded by all of this nonsense, but Molly still keeps saying no each time someone brings it up."

"Doesn't she love Peter?" Lucy asked, aghast. If Luke—her ex-boyfriend from several years ago—had ever asked Lucy to marry him, she would have said yes immediately. And besides that, Molly and Peter were destined to be together. How could she say no?

"Yeah, but Molly also wants to focus on her career, you know that, Lucy. She's going to be Minister one day, by the way, even though she doesn't know it yet. But I've seen it and we all know how Molly is. Work comes before everything else—she likes to feel successful."

Lucy nodded thoughtfully. "She always got really intense whenever we played Wizard's Chess as girls. She'd flip the table sometimes when she lost and storm off to sulk."

"How are you two the closest of all the Weasley siblings?" Lily looked over at her cousin with a questioning frown, looking at Lucy sceptically.

Lucy merely shrugged in response and the three girls turned back to the conversation, which had now morphed into Victoire showing everyone the same old picture of her two little boys. They had all seen the photograph more than a dozen times each.

"Have you looked at the book recently?" Lucy asked, somewhat bored by the antics of their older cousins. "I'd love to flip through it myself if you aren't busy going through it yourself."

"Take it. Take the stupid book and all my notes and everything else. I don't want to look at that bloody book again for a very long time. It was torture—absolute torture."

Lucy furrowed her brow, unaware of Roxy's strange, hypnotic obsession with _Historia Sancti_ , but chose not to question it, instead watching out of the corner of her eye as Molly snatched one of Victoire's photographs from her hands and waved her wand at it so that the photo sprouted wings and flew from the room, disappearing from sight.

"Aren't they supposed to be the mature ones?" Lily asked, chuckling. "They're acting worse than Remy and Will when they both want the same toy."

"Like you and Rose are any better."

"Shut the hell up, Roxy," Lily replied good-naturedly. "That's completely different. Rose is a _bitch_ and besides that, we're way younger than Molly and Vic are, so it's still appropriate."

"Right."

Lucy shook her head, bemused by the friendly banter between Lily and Roxy. "So are we actually being paired up with the groomsmen for the entire wedding ceremony? Because I was thinking of inviting someone as my plus-one and it'll be rather awkward if I have to spend the whole time talking with somebody else instead."

"Well," replied Roxy thoughtfully, putting a hand on her chin, "when you consider that Rose is married and Molly's in a fairly serious relationship, I get the feeling we won't _have_ to spend the whole time with people who aren't necessarily our dates. Though Scorpius may kill you for inviting someone to the wedding without telling him in advance, considering he's had everything planned out for months at this point."

"I have Bo Perry for my partner," Lily said absently, an almost dreamy expression on her face.

"Who is _not_ a Slytherin, last I checked," Roxy added teasingly, pointing out Lily's seeming obsession with dating exclusively Slytherin boys. She was trying to stay involved in the conversation despite her mounting boredom.

"Rahul and Simon weren't Slytherins!" Lily protested. "Besides, I never said I was necessarily interested in Bo. There's someone coming soon enough that'll make Bo Perry look as attractive as a troll if you can believe it."

"Oh?" Lucy leant in, waggling her eyebrows at Lily and letting out a small giggle. "And who is this special someone? Has little Lily already found a new flame?"

"I haven't met him yet, no," Lily replied and then laughed at Lucy and Roxy's baffled expressions. "Prophecies—visions of the future," she explained. "I know who I get married to."

"Do you know who Roxy or I marry?"

Lily shrugged absently. "I don't see _everything_ and besides that, if I ever did see you with anyone, it wasn't anybody I knew so I couldn't tell you who they were."

Roxy closed her eyes—she really didn't much care for chatter about who got married in the next year or the next decade or the next century. She didn't care about all these issues that her cousins were acting like were such big deals. If Molly didn't get married ever or if she got married tomorrow, who actually cared? Certainly Roxy didn't in the slightest.

She sighed, letting her head drop into hands, wishing she could just go home and scream into a pillow until she fell asleep.

"Okay!" Victoire cried happily, clapping her hands together and making everyone else jump. "Before we all leave, I think you guys should all try on the banquet outfits I designed for tonight's dinner and we can take a bunch of photos together. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

Roxy groaned.

* * *

There was no one at the flat—Roxanne Weasley was busy having a fun day with her family at one of the many Weasley weddings and the other two girls, little Aniya Lamb and sweet Joanna Bartley, were both at work. Their flat was completely empty, making it the perfect time to have a look around.

Roxanne had been foolish, leaving all of her notes unattended for this long. But she was only human and weren't all humans simply just foolish bags of meat that barely had enough brain cells in their heads to know how to tie their own shoes?

He smiled to himself, bony and pale fingers brushing across the crinkling parchment, scanning through the frantically scratched notes that Roxanne had written down during her endless readings of that clever little book of hers.

A few more seconds of pushing everything around revealed the book itself, with a blank cover and lacking in any decorations or indication as to what it was. But he recognised it—oh, did he recognise it. This book had haunted him for years, one of the few weapons humanity had against him.

Roxanne had been clever to make copies but he quickly found them all and started a fire in their fireplace, tossing the copies into the smoking flames with an expression of enthused glee, laughing to himself as he watched the pages blacken and curl, turning into ash and dust.

Then, clutching the book itself in his thin fingers, he flicked his wrist and flung Roxanne's last remaining hope into the fire, giving the pathetic sight a hearty chuckle as it, too, turned into nothing but a pile of darkened ash and useless nothingness that could easily be blown away in a particularly strong gust of air.

"There are others." James Potter stood behind him, arms folded, scowling. "Other copies exist out there in the world. You've not won yet."

"Yet you have none to give to poor little Roxanne." He gave the ghost a smirk, lips curling up viciously as he hissed at the man. "It matters not, besides. Soon enough I will have the strength I require to destroy you all and it won't matter _how_ many books you have because there will be no one left alive to use them against me."

"What are you?" James Potter growled, taking a step froward. He was trying to be menacing, but the creature standing before James only laughed.

"I am humanity's worst nightmare, obviously. Your pathetic attempts to reign me in continue to be absolutely fruitless—I gain power and followers with every passing day and by the time I am finished, little Roxanne will be just like this, along with everyone she loves." He pointed to the ash in the fire place, laughing mirthlessly.

"You monster!" James Potter cried, lunging forward, but before he'd gotten across the room, there was a loud explosion and he was thrown back, slamming into the wall.

The _thing_ had disappeared without a trace; the whole flat smelled of something rotten.


	48. Albus' wonderful wedding

For the most part, the legal binding of Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy was not an _absolute disaster,_ as weddings go. There were many parts, the wedding guests could agree, that could have gone much more smoothly, but, hey, at least no one died.

Not that Roxy would know since she left half-way through the reception.

* * *

Roxy, sleeping on the floor of Lily's bedroom at the Potter house, groaning loudly when something landed on her back, bounced off painfully, then hit her outstretched hand before rolling out of her blurred sight.

"Shite!" she yelled, patting her hand around on the floor for whatever had hit her. "What the fuck was that? It's way too early to deal with this."

Another object just narrowly missed the fingers of her search hand and Roxy screamed, pulling away as she spun around onto her back and glared in the direction of Victoire, who looked obnoxiously flawless and cheerful for as early as it was.

"Do you have brain damage?" Roxy snapped a the blonde, her hand finally seizing on a pair of old, worn out trainers that must have belonged to a male, judging from the size. "Why're you trying to kill me with shoes?"

"I'm not trying to _kill_ you," Victoire said in a sugary sweet voice. "It's six-fifteen and we only have a few hours to get ready for everything."

"It's six-fifteen?" Roxy shrieked; this made Lily jump in her bed and glare at them both. "The wedding isn't until one—why do we need to get up so early just to slap on some make up and a dress?"

Victoire looked positively scandalised. "Slap on some make up?" she echoed, horrified. "You are a _bridesmaid_ , Roxy, not some little strumpet getting ready for a night out on the town! Obviously, we will be needing to spend quite a long time getting ready, with how many of us there are. Five cousins and that Cot sky girl is coming to get done up, too—besides that, I'm meant to work on Scorpius' sisters as well, little work that they actually need, being naturally beautiful and only the flower girls. It's quite a lengthy bit of work and though you may think me talented, I cannot get nearly ten people _and_ myself ready in only a few hours' time!"

Roxy groaned but started gathering her toiletries together. "If you insist," she grumbled. "But if you're going to spend so much time, at least do something decent with my hair.

"I hate all of you," Lily announced from her bed; Roxy threw the trainers at her.

* * *

Nathan Cauldwell, groomsmen to Roxy's bridesmaid, was the shortest of the male half of the wedding party, yet still stood far taller than she did, a pale giant to her dark elf.

"Sorry about this," he said calmly, watching Rose chatting with her partner, Reece. "I don't think there are many men quite as short as you and we certainly wouldn't want to pair you up with a child purely to match you in height."

She shrugged, feeling the rustle of fabric against the golden wings that had been attached to the back of her dress. There was a golden circlet around her head, holding the curls of her hair tightly against her scalp and making her look angelic.

They were waiting outside of the tent, along with the rest of the wedding party, minus Albus and Scorpius, who would walk in with each other at the tail of their little parade.

Molly was coldly and determinedly ignoring any attempts of Lucas' to chat; Lucy was happy to explain the nature of man as a beast to a bemused Ethan; Reuben was staring vaguely at Lily, who was staring longingly at Bo; Rose was holding Reece's hand, both content in their conflicting sexual orientations; and Jenna was scowling at Rose.

"So is Rosalind truly married already?" Nathan asked Roxy, still looking over to the redhead with a look of longing.

"Yes, and to a _woman_ named Hannai. They're very happy together, you know. Nearly two years married now, in fact. _Very_ happily married."

He shook his head, the dreamy look gone from his eyes as he turned back to Roxy with a hesitant smile. "I am sorry. A school boy's crush—but it's over now and I respect her decision to marry whomever it is she chooses."

"And choose she has," Roxy pressed.

Nathan nodded, giving her a more thorough glance. "You know, Roxy, it's often tradition for the wedding party members—grooms-men and bridesmaids—to hook up with one another. And you're the only bridesmaid that has no partner, that I know of."

She laughed. "And yet I have no interest in you, so that's strike to. Molly has a dedicated boyfriend, strike three. Lily seems to like Bo quite a bit, strike four. Jenna is in love with Albus still and doesn't much care for you, strike five. Perhaps you ought to try Lucy? Oh, but she was talking about bringing along a plus-one, so strike six."

Roxy gave him a critical glance, taking in his closely shaven hair, his dark suit, his large blue eyes, the easy smile on his face. He might have seemed handsome to many others, but Roxy did not personally see it, especially considering that he was four years older than her.

The groomsmen sighed. "Well, perhaps a wedding isn't the most appropriate place to pick up a girl. Especially not a Weasley wedding."

"No." Roxy looked at him out of the corner of her eye as they got in line, the beginning strains of the wedding music being played. "I suspect it really isn't the place."

* * *

The wedding itself was fairly simple—Albus and Scorpius said their vows to each other and no one stood up to make any last minute confessions of love for either of the couple, so they kissed and were married with relative ease and to much applause.

However, somewhere between the wedding ending and the reception beginning, both Teddy and Uncle were called onto a mission followed by Scorpius' father making a snide remark and Uncle Ron lunging at the platinum blond, sending him reeling into Jenna, who fell down and broke her arm.

And then Remus tried to run away.

Roxy was currently outside, watching her distant relative, Leah Weasley, casually aim her wand at various shrubbery, Summoning branches and leaves to set on fire with a flick of her wand, giving the scene a bored roll of her eyes.

Many other wedding guests were searching around for the vanished five year old, but Leah and Roxy had both agreed to stay behind and watch after the younger attendees, which included seventeen year old Petra and twelve year old Lyra, who were encouraging Leah to keep destroying the whole bush, having nothing better to do until the adults returned.

Several of Leah's cousin—including her younger brother Shane—were merely sitting around, waiting for the adults to come back so that they could actually start the reception.

Roxy was currently trying to entertain the almost two year old William Lupin, who seemed mostly unimpressed by her puffs of coloured smoke or the sparkling lights she conjured up. Instead, he kept trying to wriggle from her grasp and run off to play in the dirt.

She was one of the oldest people left behind, the rest of the remaining guests consisting of anyone twenty years or less in age—the majority of those were the children or grandchildren of her dad's cousins, people she'd rarely seen before and spoke to even less, mostly because it would be like throwing herself into a pool full of annoying gingers.

Leah, dropping her hand, sighed and turned away from the burning bush, dropping to the ground next to Roxy. Nearby, Lysander was chasing his sister around while Hannah Longbottom put daisy chains in her brother's hair and laughed.

"You're one of Great-Uncle Arthur's grandchildren, aren't you?" Leah asked casually, stowing her wand in her pocket and taking Will from Roxy. The boy immediately quieted down, settling in Leah's lap as she dropped to the ground.

"Er, yeah, from George—one of his twins." Though they were only a few months apart in age, Leah had been a Gryffindor a year ahead of Roxy, so they'd not spoken to each other since Victoire's wedding seven years ago.

(Roxy hated Leah. Leah didn't care.)

"Ah. I'm Thomas Weasley's eldest—and he's Walter Weasley's eldest, who was in turn Armurus Weasley's eldest." Leah gave Roxy a critical look, not bothering to notice that Roxy had rolled her eyes; all of this was common knowledge and she didn't need to be reminded of it again. "I think I remember you, though that may just be because you stick out quite a bit."

Roxy said nothing, tucking her own wand into her purse, having no pockets in her dress. She'd heard these sorts of statements before—Roxy could be mature enough to ignore it.

Leah made a face at Will, who giggled happily. "You had a brother, didn't you? He died or something?" She didn't want for an answer. "I wish my brothers would die. They're so annoying."

"I'd rather prefer to still have my brother, actually," Roxy snapped, stunned by Leah's callous attitude. How could she say something so horrendous as wishing death upon her own siblings?

Leah shrugged, looking bored. "You might feel differently about it all if he were still around to bother you endlessly. That's how my siblings are."

Fuming, Roxy got to her feet, scooping Will from Leah's lap and ignored his whines. She glared down at the other female, coolly replying, " _You_ might feel differently if you lost one of your brothers," before stomping off to a different area of the wedding party, hoping that the adults would hurry back before she hit someone in the face.

* * *

When the reception actually got going, Roxy settled into her seat, watching as couples took to the dance floor, with Albus and Scorpius in the very centre, dancing together in a goofy manner. It was all rather romantic and sappy, exactly how a wedding was supposed to be.

Lily had tried to set Roxy to dance with her, but the younger girl protested, not really wanting to go into a crowd of people. Instead, Lily pushed Lucy to her feet and the auburn haired girl shrugged, following her cousin onto the dance floor.

As Roxy ran her fork across her empty plate, she saw someone out of the corner of her eyes sit down across from her.

She looked up, expecting one of her relatives to be smiling at her, but instead, it was Reuben Greengrass in his black tuxedo, his bright green eyes and dark skin made him look regal—almost mysterious, like he knew a lot more than Roxy ever would, and not just because he was two years older than she was.

"Roxanne Weasley," he said politely, nodding in her direction. She'd heard the rumours about Reuben from other Slytherins. He was arrogant, he was above everyone else, and he rarely ever spoke to anyone else—supposedly, his father had been the exact same way during _his_ time at Hogwarts.

(Roxy thought he was somewhat of a prick.)

Trying to imitate his casually disconnected manner, Roxy nodded at Reuben, wondering what it was, exactly, that Lily had ever seen of him.

"You are..." Reuben paused, searching for the right words. "Different from the others," he finally said, green eyes flashing. "You don't quite fit in with everyone else."

Frustrated and still angry about what Leah had said earlier, Roxy glared at him, snapping, "At least I'm not some Pureblood's unloved bastard."

"I was referring to the thing about the ghosts and the prophecy," said Reuben coldly, staring at Roxy like she was lint he'd found in his pockets.

She blushed, stammering an apology for having jumped to conclusions, but Reuben only put his hands up to silence her. Roxy shut her mouth, feeling the tips of her ears burn. She didn't think she'd ever been so embarrassed in her life until right then.

"You are on the defence," he said, shrugging—somehow, even that action managed to seem aristocratic. "That is the sort of thing that only builds up from years of having to behave in such a way. I can relate, though in a very different way, of course." He smirked at her.

Roxy felt her face flush once more.

"But my brother told me about—well, not everything, I would assume since it's absurd to give out _all_ your secrets to one person—but he has told me about your cousin's ability to see ghosts and another's ability to catch glimpses of the future. And here you are, the girl whose fate is tied to a prophecy. It must be something in your family's blood."

"Perhaps."

Her hand was moving unconsciously, dragging her fork against the plate, letting it grade all the way to the edge of the table before she began again. Roxy wasn't even aware that her cutlery was making such a horrible scratching noise against the fine china. It was as though she was in a trance or stuck in a far removed world of her own creation.

The music had grown louder, people's feet pounding against the floo in a rhythmic fashion. Shining lights glinted in their faces, making the party-goers look akin to inhuman creatures from some other world. Her breath hitched in her chest, heartbeat quickening.

It was the book—something had happened to the book. Roxy looked up and made eye contact with Lily on the other side of the room. She had no clue why the worry had come to her all of a sudden, but she inherently knew it to be true, that someone had gotten their hands on the book.

Lily was coming over and her mouth was drawn into a tight line while Reuben frowned at Roxy, bewildered as to why she'd fallen so quiet and serious.

"Are you okay?" he asked, the coldness in his voice fading to vague concern. "Are you one of those people who has seizures at the most inconvenient of times?"

"Hush!" she hissed, pulling out a seat for Lily, who slid into the chair, red in the face and out of breath. She looked over at Roxy, chest heaving. "What did you see?" Roxy asked frantically. "What happened, what did you see? Is it the book?"

"He's in your apartment right now." Lily's voice was tense and hoarse from yelling along with the music. "I saw him—he's there, he's looking for the book and for all the copies you made of it."

Roxy didn't need to ask who 'he' was. "Will he find it?"

Lily shook her head, frowning. "I can't tell— _Seeing_ him open the door with just a flick of his wrist and tearing the whole place apart was as far as I got. He might have already found it by now."

Reuben put his hands up eyes flashing as he realised that something of great interest was currently being discussed right in front of him. "Hello, Lils." He nodded at Lily, who rolled her eyes in response. "I didn't realise that you of all people were the Seer in the family, though I suppose that shouldn't really surprise me. But more importantly, what is this book you two keep talking about—and who is 'him', exactly?"

"Did Scorpius ever mention the Faceless One when he was spilling secrets to you?" Roxy asked, feeling her whole body buzz with energy. She wanted to Apparate home _now_ and confront him before that monstrous bastard could get away with invading her personal life like that.

"You mean the daemon?" Reuben muttered, brow furrowing. "Sure, Scorpius mentioned him briefly, but..."

"Daemon? What do you mean by daemon?"

Lily had practically lunged herself at Reuben, who looked down at her coolly like this was the sort of thing that happened pretty commonly—discussing world-ending monsters that had broken into Roxy's flat to steal a book and being attacked by ex-girlfriends.

"Well, yeah, he's a daemon—or, more specifically, if I had to hazard a guess, a _kakodaimōn_ , considering he wants to destroy the world and all. They're like...malevolent jinns or really, _really_ nasty ghouls, but quite powerful all the same. I think the last time a daemon showed up on Earth was around the same time that the witch burnings started happening. They're usually not very friendly towards humans and people often start dying or falling ill when they're around."

"How long have you know all this?" Lily demanded in a shrill tone, not caring if anyone could hear her over the loud music—which, thankfully, they couldn't.

"Remember that stage I went through when we were dating and I was obsessed with muggle and wizard mythology? All I ever did was recite facts about it until you took my books from me and threatened to throw them in the lake if I didn't shut up about it all."

Lily nodded.

"One of the things I read about was muggle _demons_ versus wizard _daemons_ , which you would know about if you ever once listened to me."

"Wait." Roxy blinked at him. "If Scorpius told you all of this stuff, then why didn't you tell him about the Faceless One being a daemon when he first brought it up?"

Reuben shrugged and gave them a lazy smile. "He never asked me what it was actually called, now did he?"

* * *

When Lily had finally located Lucy, Jo, and Aniya amongst the guests, they quickly apologised to Albus and Scowl about having to leave early; thankfully, the newly married couple understood and led them to an Apparition point, seeing them off with friendly waves and big smiles.

(Okay, so maybe they were less understanding and more incredibly intoxicated, making them agreeable to nearly anything someone said to them.)

The front door of the flat was wide open and a putrid, sulphuric smell wafted out with the afternoon breeze, making the girls gag.

"Smells like rotten eggs," Lily spluttered, gagging and choking as she pulled her dress over her mouth and nose to avoid breathing in the smell.

Inside, the furniture had all been overturned and knocked out of place; the kitchen table was on its side, shoved half-way into the living room while both couches were pushed against the cupboard door, the stuffing coming out of the one closest to Roxy. Papers—newspapers, old school work, pages from books, recipes—had all been magically snatched from their proper play and now lay scattered across the floor.

Ash stained the wood in front of their fireplace, where the dying remains of a fire still struggled to give out a feeble flicker. Inside the fireplace itself was even more ash, blasted across the inner walls in a manner reminiscent of a muggle bomb going off.

When they checked the other rooms of the flat, it revealed only more destruction, with sheets ripped from the bed, empty pillows surrounded by their feathers, tubes of toothpaste smeared across the bathroom walls and mirrors, clothes were strewn across the floor.

"Apparently this particular daemon doesn't think too fondly of your home décor," said Lily, taking in the smashed and damaged picture frames from Roxy's room that made a path all the way into the back hall closet.

"The book's gone," Aniya said, standing in the doorway of Roxy's room and frowning down at her. "I don't know if he burnt it along with all your notes, but we can't find it anywhere. All of your stuff is gone, as far as I can tell—every last note, every single copy you made has disappeared. I think he burnt it all, or at least burnt the notes and ran off with the book."

She shook her head, watching as Roxy angrily kicked at her bed frame, swearing loudly.

"We should have put a tracking charm on the book!" Roxy said loudly, glaring at the other four females. "Why didn't we think to put a tracking charm on the book? How come no one planned ahead for this?"

Aniya shook her head, directing Roxy to sit down at her desk before she became too angry and tried to kick something a little more important than the sturdy wooden frame of her bed.

"We couldn't have known he would find the book so fast, Rox. And besides, if he _did_ burn it along with everything else, then a tracking charm wouldn't help us any more than where we are right now."

"But we should have known! We should have been prepared for this—if this is really a daemon we're talking about, he won't be deterred by anything to stop us from finding a way to take us down." Roxy, collapsing into her chair, put her hands in her heads, feeling the beginning stages of a headache building in the front of her brain.

What was the point in trying so hard? They'd been putting effort into this for months now—Lily had lost a friend because of everything that had happened—yet no one was any closer to an actual solution. This daemon, this monster, or whatever the Faceless One as, always managed to be one step ahead of them, carefully calculating his every move to make sure that they would never make any progress towards defeating him.

What had they ever done to incur his wrath? What crime had humanity committed against this monster that his only desire was to bring about their downfall in the most painful way possible?

If they didn't have the book, though, then they didn't have _anything_. The Circle might as well be in the same position as the day they first started—confused and afraid.

"I feel completely useless," Jo mumbled, leaning against the wall with a twisted look on her face. She had her hands wrapped around the bunched up end of her dress robes and looked like she might scream soon. "It's like, no matter how hard we try, everything ends up going entirely wrong. We're not any closer to an answer than we were before finding the book."

"But we shouldn't give up hope so easily!" Lucy looked between the two Slytherins with a shocked expression. "It's important to have determination—otherwise, he wins without even trying!"

Roxy got up, brushing past them all to storm into the living room. She knelt down in front of the fireplace, ignoring the ash that coated her knees and turned the ends of her dress a dark grey. Roxy was too busy coating her fingers with ash to notice, as she was hoping to find maybe just _one_ small scrap of parchment that had miraculously survived the fire.

There was nothing to be found—everything was soot, her writings burnt so thoroughly that no amount of magic, even a million Reparo charms, would be able to fix what the Faceless One had done.

"It smells like Dark magic." Aniya and the others had tentatively followed Roxy in to the living room and were watching her slam her hands into the stone fireplace.

"And you know what dark magic smells like _because…_?" Lily asked suspiciously.

The smaller girl shrugged. "Our house always smelled like this whenever Dad was around. It coated his robes, his wand, his skin—Dad wore dark magic like a normal man would wear cologne. Though Mum always liked to say that Dad only _really_ got into dark magic during his time in Azkaban. Before then, he was just some idiot that got sucked into a dumb idea."

There was a loud groaning from beside one f the couches; Jo, wand drawn, walked over slowly, moving the couch by magic. With ash covering his eternally youthful face, James Potter coughed and looked up at them when Jo uncovered him. He smiled weakly.

"I tried to stop him," the ghost said shortly, taking Jo's proffered hand. He was eerily alive-looking, with bruises on his face and blood trickling from his nose. "I guess a daemon trumps ghosts, though, huh?"

"Why're you bleeding?" Roxy asked; on the other side of the room, Lily had blanched and collapsed into Lucy's arms.

James Potter put his hand to his nose, looking at the bloody mess with shock. "Suppose this is his idea of a joke, then, making me corporeal just so he can kick my arse. Got to hand it to the bastard, that's pretty clever." His eyes fell on the trembling form of Lily. "I assume the shock comes from seeing your deceased grandfather for the first time?"

"You're the same age as me!" Lily managed to gasp out, watching James Potter warily, like he might lung at her suddenly or perhaps disappear in a puff of smoke.

He shrugged. "I did _die_ at twenty-one." James screwed up his face in concentration, making the bleeding stop and the bruises fade away. He looked a little less solid and wobbled around for a moment, all the energy sucked out of him from the effort.

"Why can we see you now," asked Jo suspiciously, looking James Potter up and down. "If all the ghosts disappeared from sight, shouldn't you be invisible?"

"Combination of putting a lot of effort forth and having someone who can naturally see ghosts on their own in the room." He nodded at Lucy. "Roxy's got a bit of it, too, so that helps as well."

"I do?" Roxy blinked, brow furrowing. "But you're the first ghost I've ever seen. If I'm like Lucy, shouldn't I see them all the time?"

James Potter didn't answer, looking towards the front door as his form flickered and disappeared for a second before coming back; this time, he was paler and more faded and Roxy could see the couch through his torso.

When he turned his head back in their direction, his eyes were large and empty while his face had a green tint to it—the same shade of green that the Killing Curse was, from what Roxy had seen in textbooks.

The ghost opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out; he was growing more difficult to see with every passing second, his form fading into nothingness. Then he was gone, disappeared entirely, leaving the five girls to look at each other in shock. Jo was the only one to merely cross her arms over her chest and scowl rather than gape at the spot where James Potter had just been.

"What are we going to do now?" Aniya asked quietly, looking between Lucy and Roxy. "Are we going to tell everyone that the book's been destroyed or..." She frowned, gaze dropping to the floor. "What are we supposed to do now?"

It was Lucy who answered. "It's like I said earlier—we stay hopeful. We stay optimistic. And, most importantly, we keep looking for answers no matter how long it takes. I suppose we might as well tell the rest of the Circle about the destruction of the book since they deserve to know we've lost our information so the whole group can work together to figure out where we want to go next with all of this."

"So we _don't_ chase down the Faceless one?" Jo asked sceptically.

Lucy shook her head. "He doesn't have the book we pretty can pretty much determine that from all of the ash. And going after paths that we know don't lead anywhere is worse than having a path and losing it because then we end up wasting time running after something when we all know it won't lead anywhere."

"But if we ever see him again," Roxy said darkly, glaring at the fireplace, "I don't care about the consequences, I'm going to punch that bastard in the face."


	49. Wherein the Faceless One is annoying

Roxy wasn't sure if fighting the Faceless One had taken all the energy out of James Potter or if he couldn't find a way back to talk to her, but Roxy did not see him for the remainder of the month, nor for any of June.

At the end of the month of June, Roxy went to Lorcan and Lysander's graduation, sitting with Mr and Mrs Scamander, who were wearing bright yellow robes, making the, stand out from everyone else at the ceremony; Roxy might have though them both completely insane if she'd never met the twins' parents. Instead, she only scooted over slightly and tried to pretend that she had no clue who they were.

As they headed into July—passing through Albus', Scorpius', Aunt Audrey's, and Lucy's birthdays—Roxy found that thankfully, at least, she could still recall sections of the book.

She started writing down whatever came to mind and put anti-flammable charms on everything; then she'd place each full piece of parchment in a specially locked box that would only open when it recognised her fingertips and placed a Tracing Charm on the whole container. There was no way she would let the Faceless One get the best of her again.

New locking charms and wards were placed around the flat, on the front door, and leading into each of the three girls' rooms.

Roxy might have come across as paranoid but she would rather seem crazy and be safe from harm than to allow the stupid daemon anywhere near her belongings any time soon.

They had several more meetings—debating new routes of finding information on the Faceless One, reviewing what little they knew or got from Roxy, and just generally got into arguments about _everything_ they could think of to argue about.

Lindsey and Brennan kept butting heads, finding themselves falling on the opposite sides of debates every single time a new topic came up. The others almost thought the two were being intentionally hostile, especially when one of their 'noisy discussions' fell into a petty argument about the best way to put a sandwich together.

But that didn't mean progress was not made; eventually, they were able to come to a decision to investigate the disappeared children and try to free them—and soon, before anyone else died at the hands of their not so benevolent government.

At least Roxy was not on the team that had to dig through old paperwork of birth records and student accolades to see if the kids could be located; rather, her job was to talk to the family members who had lost or been forced to give away their children to the Ministry in the last three decades.

Though some might have thought Roxy got the worse job, she knew that she was better suited to play 'bad Auror' in an interrogation, using Slytherin cunning to sneak answers from those who were not willing to speak.

And the first grieving mother to whom she and her team were sent to speak with concerning the loss of a child to a secret agenda?

Yoshiko Lamb.

* * *

Aniya, despite her insistence that she could handle the discussion, was discouraged from being in the actual room when Roxy and Lindsey explained to Mrs Lamb that her middle daughter, Aleah, was dead at seventeen years of age. Because she wouldn't leave the matter alone, they came to the agreement that Aniya could stay with them, but would stay silent for the beginning part of their conversation.

Mrs Lamb put her hands over her face as Lindsey quietly told her what had happened to Aleah. The middle-aged woman let out a sob, shaking her head and moaning. Aniya, standing by her mother's side with her arms crossed, was trembling with the effort of trying to stay calm.

"I knew I should never have let Russell teach you girls Legilimency. I always told him it was a bad idea but when did he ever listen to me? When I warned him away from the Death Eaters, away from the dark magic—did he pay me any mind? And now I've lost a daughter!" She buried her face in her hands again.

Lindsey gave her a sympathetic look as Aniya patted her mother on the back, whispering quietly into her ear; Roxy's response to everything was to remain silently in her seat, looking down at her shoes to avoid looking at the crying woman.

"Is Anarya still alive?" Mrs Lamb asked when she'd calmed down a bit. She looked up at Aniya with a hopeful look. "She's only a little girl, please tell me she's okay."

Aniya nodded solemnly. "We're working on finding her and all of the other stolen children, but one of my friends did find paperwork about most of the victims—that's how we found out about Aleah in the first place. Anarya is fine, though she is still in their custody."

"You're going to rescue her? You'll bring her back safely to me?"

"Yes, Mimi, we'll bring her back. We'll bring them _all_ back. The Ministry isn't allowed to get away with this sort of thing, not if we can help it."

Mrs Lamb's eyes filled with tears once more as she clasped her daughter's hands. "You are everything your father never could be. You are going to bring honour back to our family, re-write the wrongs that he did. My little Aniya, so brave, so clever. I'm glad that, despite all his efforts, Russell has never been able to corrupt you or turn you towards his desires. You have always been too good for him to win."  
Aniya got a hard, cold look in her eyes that completely defied her Hufflepuff nature. Looking at her, Roxy could see the possible Slytherin hiding just beneath the surface, a stiff anger waiting to explode.

"I'll never be like him," Aniya said determinedly. "I'm a better person than he is or ever was. And I won't allow the Ministry to ruin any more lives than they already have." She spoke with such resolution, such finality, and Roxy had to respect her for the fact that she was staying so bold even though her voice trembled and her cheeks were stained with tears.

Lindsey, sitting absolutely still in her seat, with her hands placed calmly in her lap, had not made any noise in the last several minutes. She'd frozen in a singular position, a girl stuck in time—it almost was as if she wasn't breathing any more, her eyes widened in shock or horror. Lindsey looked, and acted, dead, and it was making Roxy nervous.

"Lindsey?" she asked, poking the girl gently in the shoulder. "Lindsey, are you okay?"

The other girl didn't react, still as a statue. Roxy moved to look her in the face and immediately saw the emptiness in Lindsey's eyes—the lack of life. She'd seen this before with Lucy and with Lorcan. The Faceless One was here, quickly overtaking Lindsey's mind. But this time, James Potter wasn't here to help knock him out of Lindsey.

She shook the girl for a few seconds before turning around to look at Aniya with a frantic look. "He's here," Roxy whispered, pushing away from Lindsey. "He's here, he's inside of her."

"What?" Aniya rushed over, putting her hands on Lindsey's face, looking her in the eyes, trying to find some surviving humanity in the girl. Lindsey gave no indication that she was aware of their presence. She didn't even blink; Roxy was now certain that Lindsey was no longer breathing.

Then, so suddenly that the other two girls screamed and jumped away and made Mrs Lamb pull out her wand, Lindsey tilted her head, eyes twitching wildly as they focused on each of the females in the room in turn. A cruel, cold smile curled her lips, giving her a feral look. Lindsey leant forward, sitting at the edge of her seat—a jack ready to pounce.

"You know," Lindsey said in a voice that was not her own, "I'd say it's nice to see you again, Miss Weasley, but I must admit that I'm getting rather tired of you always showing up to ruin my plans. It's especially shameful considering that you've failed every single time as of yet. When are you ever going to realise that I'm far too strong, too clever, and too powerful for you to ever come close to stopping me?"

"and yet, I don't really give a shit how great you think you are," Roxy retorted, hoping she sounded braver than she felt. "We'll figure out how to defeat you. It just takes time."

Lindsey smirked. "You speak like a human. 'It just takes time'." The tone was mocking, condescending. "Who says you have time, little girl? Who says I'm not ready to slaughter you all tomorrow, exterminate humanity like the pathetic rats you are?"

It was Roxy's turn to give Lindsey's form a cocky smile. " _You_ do, in fact," she replied sweetly. The shock that flickered across Lindsey's face—mixed with the still lifeless darkness in her eyes—made her look almost...scared.

"Why do you say that, Miss Weasley?"

"If you were able to kill us tomorrow, you would have acted on that already. You find it funny to play with humans like we're your personal toys, so you wouldn't make an attack without a little bit of fun first. It's simply not your style."

Lindsey's lips curled into a snarl; Roxy stared into those empty eyes, wondering if she could somehow see that psychotic daemon hiding inside Lindsey's head. She watched the 'girl' carefully. Out of the corner of Roxy's eye, she noticed Aniya slowly Summoning Lindsey's wand away from her.

"Clever," said the daemon, turning slowly towards Aniya. Lindsey's hand raised, retrieving the wand without saying a single spell. "Unfortunately, not clever enough, either of you. I am growing bored of humanity—I've not found anyone who's strong enough to beat me and I'd rather not wait around for them to show up."

"You mean Ruby?" Roxy demanded of the monster.

Aniya shoved her mother from the room, locking her into the kitchen with several tear-filled apologies, telling her that she'd be safer away from anything that happened in the living room, despite her mother's protests.

Lindsey's head bobbed up and down as a spine-chilling laugh poured from her throat. Her lips were pulled as widely apart as possible into a menacing grin as her hand raised and both Aniya and Roxy's wands went flying across the room, hitting the wall before clattering to the floor and rolling out of sight.

"An infant," the daemon snarled. "An infant whose entire existence is wrapped up in a shoddy prophecy that can be as easily crushed as an insect under my shoe. By hell's flames, I don't even _need_ to touch her myself. All she needs is a small dose of Dragon Pox or to climb a bit too high, and oh no, little dead Ruby and no more obstacles."

"But there's someone else named in that prophecy, too. Do you even know who that is?" Aniya asked, glaring at the daemon.

Lindsey wore, glaring at them both. "You think you're so smart, don't you?" Roxy only shrugged, grinning. "I could kill you where you stand for your big mouth, don't you two know that?"

"You haven't answered Aniya's questions," Roxy replied in her most sugar-filled voice, remaining as calm as possible despite her quickly pounding heart.

"And you already know the answer so I don't see the point in persisting on this point any longer." The daemon sounded angry, which made him seem more human, somehow—or perhaps it was that life was slowly pooling back into her blue eyes. The daemon swore again, clearly coming to the same conclusion. "This is not a win on your behalf, Miss Weasley, whatever you may think," the creature said, voice slowing down.

As Roxy watched Lindsey return back to her usual self, though, she couldn't help but feel that was one step closer to winning this little chess game of theirs.

One step closer to the end.

* * *

The daemon did not visit them again in the following days or weeks, at least as far as Roxy was aware.

They went from one family to the next, asking each time what could be recalled about their stolen child, especially in the final moments that the family had seen them for the last time.

A lot of people, unsurprisingly, became angry at the mention of their stolen kid, as the three girls were opening a wound that was, for some parents', decades old. They slammed the door in Roxy's face, yelled obscenities at them, or threatened to owl the Ministry if she, Aniya, and Lindsey didn't leave their property immediately.

In those cases, the girls fled without pushing the issue, not wanting to let the Ministry be made aware of what they were doing.

But it was necessary that they get a clear idea of why these kids were taken, so they pressed forward to the next house on the list, hoping to find someone for whom the wound was not so painful that they would not speak out about it.

Other parents tearfully accused _them_ of being the ones to have stolen the children, despite the fact that none of them looked older than twenty-five years old and also did not work for the Ministry—an actual Ministry official would have shown their badge at some point, if they'd bothered doing any sort of investigation into this at all.

"Apparently, we're the youth team of this kidnapping ring," Roxy snapped after having the door slammed in their faces for the sixth time that day. "You'd think, if we _were_ the ones who stole those kids, they'd be demanding answers from us rather than crying about if for ten straight minutes and kicking us off the doorstep."

"People react in different ways sometimes, Roxy. Not everyone bottles it up and acts like everything is fine while they try to continue to behave rationally. That's your preferred method, which is fine if it helps you; other people might go mad instead or become emotional or bitter, especially when you bring up a loss they've been trying to bounce back from for more than a decade."

Roxy opened her mouth to retort, but could find no argument against Lindsey that did not come out sounding childish and whiny. She sighed and fell quiet as they Apparated to the next place on their list, hoping this one would go better.

On the grass behind them remained two indents similar to a pair of shoes; the grass did not spring back into its upright position for several seconds longer than it should have

* * *

The newest house that they arrived at—now three days later and having approached more than thirty families since they first began the week—was different from all the rest, though Roxy could not have explained _why_ she knew that to be true, even if someone were holding a wand to her head and threatening to cast the Killing Curse on her.

The yard was small and green, the house itself nearly identical to every other home on the street; they were in a mostly muggle neighbourhood in Surrey, stuck looking at the neatly painted brown fence with some sense of apprehension that none of the girls entirely comprehended.

"Do you want to knock?" Roxy asked Aniya, who shrugged uncomfortably, hand resting on the gate as she eyed the house warily.

Lindsey blinked rapidly, face flushed. "You're the most assertive of us, Roxy, maybe you should knock instead." She looked over at the younger girl with an expression that was bordering on fear, her hands trembling.

What was it about this house that put them so on edge? Who could possibly live inside tha the girls couldn't even make it onto the front lawn for fear of something happening?

While they were debating who would be responsible for knocking on the door, none of them noticed that the door had already opened and an older woman came shuffling out, looking at her newest guests with a small smile that was like a secret held tightly behind her lips, or a joke that only she knew the punchline to.

"Hello Miss Weasley," she called out to the girls, catching their attention. "Hello Miss Lamb, Miss Eunice. I was expecting you much sooner than this, to be truthful. Pray come inside and we'll speak about your tardiness in the shade."

Roxy, Aniya, and Lindsey shared an anxious look, their apprehension growing with every passing second. But she was just an old Asian woman. What did it matter? She was no real harm to them, right? How could she be?

They opened the gate and walked slowly up the path, following the old woman inside; each of the girls' fingers was tightly gripping their wands as they were led to sit down in the living room, which was decorated with several hand-knit projects and pictures of various children at a degree of ages.

"Would any of you dears like tea?" she asked, smiling warmly at them. It did nothing to steady their nerves. "I just made a pot a few minutes ago when my wards went off."

"Er...thank you," Aniya mumbled. When the old woman beamed at them and shuffled off, Aniya turned to look at her companions. "She's skilled," the girl whispered. "her whole mind is blocked—not even a single thought is coming through. I think she might be the most powerful Occlumens I've ever met."

"Oh, I'm sure that's not true," said the old woman, shuffling back in and making them all jump. "There are plenty of people more talented than I, if only they were given the proper training. But I will thank you for the compliment regardless, Miss Lamb." She looked around at them all, taking in their nervous expressions as she passed out cups of tea. "I am Phuong Itawa, by the way. I suspect you are here concerning the whereabouts of my eldest daughter, Trinh Itawa?"

They nodded tentatively, unsure of how she'd , clearing her throat,

Roxy, clearing her throat, leant forward. "If you don't mind, that is, Mrs Itawa. We noticed your daughter was one of the oldest to be taken by the Ministry who is still alive today, as well as being amongst the first group taken. We were curious as to whether or not you had any idea why she'd been stolen from you."

"Of course I do," replied Mrs Itawa in a cheerful voice. "I'm the one who gave her up willingly in the first place"

"What?" They recoiled from the woman in shock and horror, unable to imagine how someone would ever willingly give their child away like that to something so terrible.

"Why—why would you do that, Mrs Itawa?" Aniya asked, blinking at the woman in bewilderment. "Don't you know that they're killing a lot of those children? Why would you give Trinh away when there's a possibility they'll harm her?"

Mrs Itawa continued to smile charmingly, unaffected by their shock—or, perhaps, relishing in it. "Allow me to clarify, girls. Before I was badly injured and forced to retire ahead of schedule nearly a decade ago, I worked with the Department of Mysteries on a project that we referred to as 'Project Starkid'. In fact, I was one of the leaders of this project and was more than happy to hand over my eldest child in order to serve our purpose. And I must say, Trinh has done her job quite well. I am quite proud of her."

" _You're_ one of the people who've been stealing children?" Aniya gaped at the woman, disgust written on her face. "And you decided that one of the first children you were going to take was your own? Are you sick in the head or did they pay you to be that way as well?"

The smile dropped from Itawa's face and she glared at Aniya. "My daughter is a talented, skilled girl and it was an honour for her to be chosen as a testing subject. An _honour_! So many have failed over the years because they weren't strong enough or smart enough, but _my_ girl… _my_ girl is perfect. She's the prime example of a new generation that will live in peace, safe from any threats—because who would dare defy an army made up of the most talented witches and wizards to ever live, especially when they are already started on creating this newer, more elite version of themselves to replace all who are not ready for the world that is to come."

"So you're a complete nutter, then, am I understanding that correctly?"

Itawa shook her head; long abandoned was the sweet, friendly old woman. She was made up entirely of burning rage and ice-cold hostility. Roxy would not put anything past Itawa, especially for her to suddenly pull her wand out and start hexing the three of them.

"You are the problem here, my dear," she told Aniya, scowling. "You are talented, you are smart, yet you put all of your energy towards stopping the only people in this world who can truly help you. We alone can help you reach your full potential, yet you reject the cause without giving it any thought."

"How in the hell is subjecting yourself to insane tests given by a bunch of people who _stole_ most of those involved—how is that going to improve the world?" Roxy slowly let her hand creep into her pocket to wrap around the hilt of her wand. "It sounds to me like your beliefs are no better than that of the Death Eaters, wanting to eradicate anyone who doesn't fit your image of how the wizarding population should be."  
Itawa smirked. "You accuse me of being part of an extermination? This is not a culling, my dear Miss Weasley. We will not kill people like you, who are useless to us dead, but rather we will change you into the kind of people that we need for our new world."

"Brainwashing us all into being crazy just like you? Is that what you did to your daughter and the other children?"

"My daughter is braver than any of you!" Itawa jumped to her feet, red in the face. "She will be a leader—a great leader—of a new world and if you do not fall in line with the inevitable, then we will be forced to remove you from our perfect society by any means necessary.

"You're killing your daughter, Mrs Itawa," Lindsey said loudly. "You killed children already—dozens—all for your sick dreams. You are a murderer, don't you realise that?"

"I did not kill those kids. I never killed anyone. I merely allowed for those who worked for me to decide who was strong enough to survive to the end. But it has never been me to end anyone's life personally, by my own two hands. I never made the decision myself, but merely wrote down the names of those whom we were forced t let go for the greater cause."

"Who killed them?" Aniya asked coldly.

"I don't have to tell you that, I don't—"

"Who killed them?! You owe us that—you owe Trinh that! Who killed those kids? Who?!" Aniya was on her feet, wand pointed at Itawa's face as she screamed over and over, "Who?! Who killed them? Who killed them?"

"McClane!" Itawa finally yelled back in response. "Rafael McClane was my right-hand man for fifteen years and now he runs Project Starkid as the head contributor. He makes the decisions, he decides who to execute—if you're going to attack someone, go after him instead. Or better yet, find that useless son of his before that little idiot ruins all our plans."

"His son?"

Itawa nodded, her face still red; Roxy pulled Aniya's arm down so that she was not holding a weapon to the ageing woman's face, as much as Roxy wanted to make her suffer as well. "His name is Cerj McClane. _He_ was supposed to be our number one subject but someone messed up along the way and Cerj abandoned Project Starkid. He ran away and—and I've not seen him since then."

"Someone escaped? One of your victims got away—but, I mean—how?" Aniya gawked at the old woman.

"Yes, he did, but..." Itawa took a deep breath, pinching the bridge of her nose. "If you think what I've done and what my people have done, then the monster that Cerj McClane has become is far than anything we could ever do now. That boy is inhuman."

"Because of what you did to him? Because of the years of psychological and physical torture that he was put through under your orders?"

"The boy was wrong before we ever received him. It was Rafael's mistake, thinking that his boy could handle everything. He wasn't ready, wasn't stable—yet what promise he showed! And my team was willing to overlook it all because we thought he could handle the tests. Unfortunately, that ended up being the wrong decision to make, though how we were supposed to know that, I'll never guess. It was—well, it _is_ the one thing I regret most about Project Starkid, if I regret anything."

"And you made it worse by torturing him for years, rather than actually giving him the help that he so clearly needed." Aniya was still standing, fists clenched. "You could have helped him instead of abusing him for so many years that you created a monster and then accidentally unleashed him upon the world—this is all your fault!"

Itawa cleared her throat. "Yes, well, there is nothing that can be done now. Unless you could tell me where Cerj McClane is, I can do nothing to help you." She got to her feet, looking each girl in the face, wearing an expression that Roxy couldn't read. "Other than that, though, I would like for you three to get out of my house now and never speak to me again."

They nodded, wanting nothing to do with this evil old woman any longer, and the three of them shuffled out the front door, though Aniya had to be pulled along so that she did not try to attack Itawa; Roxy looked back at the elderly lady, standing in the doorway, wondering if she even had a soul. How anyone could do those things to children and yet not feel even the slightest bit of guilt about anything that had happened—Roxy couldn't imagine it.

–

He smiled to himself, watching the other members of Phoenix wander around, talking with their silly, affected voices, their faces covered to hide the identities of people that no one really cared enough to find out about.

He'd gotten to speak to many of them since he had first joined Phoenix four months ago, back in April. The majority of the group were merely here for the fun of it, for the social nature, not because they necessarily bought into the ideals, though they were certainly not finding any of Phoenix to be bizarre enough that they walked away in an outrage, never to be seen again.

But there were others, those who were dedicated and truly did want to improve the wizarding community. It was with these sorts of people that he would be able to change the world for the better. He was the face of a revolution, of a new and brighter tomorrow.

Wasn't that what Mrs Itawa and his father and all the other adults with Project Starkid had always raised him to believe, that he was going to be the one to change everything?

And it was true, it was all true, he was the only one with the power and the intelligence to fix everything that was wrong with the world. It was with like like those here in Phoenix that he would rule the world; it was with people like the strange man he'd met last night, the one who had kept his face in the shadows yet spoke such words of wisdom.

 _He_ understood how the world truly needed to work—together, the man had told him, they would change everything about the world so that all of the Purebloods were appropriately punished for what they had done and so tha the wizarding world was repaired, brought back to what it was always meant to be. Together, they were going to fix everything that was wrong with the human race of today.

Cerj McClane was the face of the future and the voice of tomorrow.


	50. Learning some (uncomfortable) secrets

Roxy sat at the edge of the table, looking at her little niece, who was colouring pictures of unicorns and dragons while humming cheerfully to herself and eating grapes from a bowl that her mother had set out for her.

"So, Faith," Roxy began slowly, making the five year old glance up from her drawings. "How have things been? You're starting primary school soon, aren't you?"

Roxy herself had been a product of a movement to make sure that young witches and wizards still received an intelligent education before starting at Hogwarts; Roxy found herself sitting at a desk five days a week with twenty other kids her age, learning how to write essays and a few basic spells alongside science and history lessons.

Faith shrugged and continued colouring. "Mummy says that school is good for me. Also, Remy will be there so I have a friend." She smiled down at her paper, colouring a little faster. "I like Remy. He's funny and smart."

"Yes, Remus is quite the amusing little boy." Roxy looked towards the living room, where Remus Lupin was entertaining his little brother, the birthday boy. "It's good to have family that you can become close friends with. Becoming close with your family is always an important thing to do if you want to have strong relationships."

"Are you and I close?"

The question made Roxy pause and look down at the table, eyes scanning the ancient scratches and nicks in the wood, most of which had been around since before she was born.

She'd not really seen much of her niece since Faith's birth five and a half years ago, partially because of Emily's reluctance to involve Roxy and Angelina in her life and partially because Roxy didn't want to see the little girl any more than necessary because the sight of Faith only made her ever see Freddie.

Roxy sighed, trying to come up with an honest answer that didn't hurt Faith's feelings. "We could be closer, I think. There's still time to become good friends."

"Like me and Remy?"

"Yeah, like you and Remy." Roxy continued to look away, thoughts of Freddie creeping into her head the more she focused on Faith's curls and big blue eyes.

Faith continued to colour for another minute before setting her crayons aside to glance at Roxy. "Mummy got married last week," she said in a shy voice, shoulders pulled up to her ears as she spoke. So now I have two mummies and Mumma Kinsey is gonna have a baby soon so I'll be a big sister, too."

"Emily got married? To-to a girl?" Roxy had been aware that Emily was bisexual, but she'd always thought that Freddie's ex-girlfriend would be the type to, having lost the love of their life, stay single forever rather than give their heart away to someone new.

"Yes," said Emily herself, coming back in from the living room with convenient timing. "I did, in fact, marry Kinsley Cornfoot last week in a very private ceremony. We didn't feel like making a big deal out of everything so it was just the two of us, the Ministry official, and little Faith." She ruffled her daughter's hair playfully.

"Mumma Kinsey and Mummy looked really pretty in their dresses," Faith offered before returning to her colouring.

"You've been seeing someone else? You married this 'someone else'? I thought my brother was the love of your life. I thought he'd be the only one for you no matter what happened. But now you've gone and _married_ someone—betraying my brother!"

Emily put her hands up defensively, eyes widening with shock at Roxy's sudden outrage. Faith had also paused once more, brow furrowing as she looked between her mother and aunt, puzzled at the sudden anger.

"Roxy, you've got to understand that things are different from how you may remember them. Your brother and I...yes, we were a couple and yes, we'd been together for three years by the time he died, but I don't...I don't think, Faith or not, that we would have ever lasted." She glanced at Faith, encouraging the little girl to head into the living room, then stood silently until the five year old was gone. "Freddie and I...our relationship wasn't the greatest—we rarely ever talked by the end and I would have broken up with him eventually anyway, most likely." Emily looked to Roxy, whose fists were clenched. "I know this isn't what you wanted to hear this sort of thing, but it's true. Freddie and I weren't perfect for each other and marrying Kinsley...I'm with the love of my life now."

Roxy glared down at the nicked table, wondering if her brother had felt the same way too, or if he thought their relationship was going just as well as Roxy had always assumed it to be.

"He was special to me, in his own way," Emily continued in a quiet, sad voice. "But things change—people change. Last year, would you have expected that you would break up with Kieran or did you think the two of you would stay together forever because he was the first guy to ever say that he loved you? Things don't always end up how you expect, Roxy."

Roxy looked away, feeling like her whole world had been turned upside down and thrown into a bin; her whole life, she'd always thought that Emily and Freddie were amongst those couples who were tragic lovers pulled apart too soon, but now...it turned out that something she'd always accepted as truth was simply not true.

"You hold Freddie up on a pedestal, Roxy, you always have," Emily said calmly, ignoring the pained look on the younger girl's face. "He was the cool older brother that you always looked up to and right as you were reaching the age where you would start seeing his flaws, he died. You never had to see a wasted Freddie or a Freddie who punched a whole into a wall because things weren't going his way. For you, Freddie was almost exclusively the best older friend but to me, he was the kind of guy who would flirt with other girls right in front of me, daring me to call him out on it and risk losing the relationship that I had with him."

"You're a liar," spat Roxy, wishing she hadn't even started this conversation in the first place. She didn't want to hear this kind of crap from Emily—not about her brother, not about what kind of person he had been while alive.

Emily only sighed, cupping her head in her hands as she looked out the window that overlooked Molly Weasley's garden.

"I'm not saying we didn't love each other in our own special way but our relationship was never going to last. There was no respect between us, even in the beginning, and you've certainly got to have respect to succeed."

Roxy only glared at her brother's ex-girlfriend and shook her head. "My brother wasn't like that, you're just going back in time and re-writing history. I don't believe that Freddie would behave in the way you say he did because that was never like him. He wasn't a terrible person."

"I never said he was a terrible person," Emily replied defensively, "only that our relationship was full of more mistakes than not. I know you probably don't want to hear these kinds of things about Freddie but you're an adult now and you need to stop looking at everything about him with rose-tinted glasses."

In the living room, Victoire had stood up and was calling for people to join them so that she could help Will unwrap his presents

Roxy gave Emily one last hard look before she got up, part of her wondering if what Emily had said was true; the rest of her screamed out that it was all lies and Emily being cruel for no discernible reason. All of her though wanted to hit the older female and never speak to her again.

"You didn't know Freddie, then," Roxy said to Emily coldly, looking at her with burning hatred. "My brother wasn't the kind of person you're describing. I don't know who you think you dated but that was _not_ my brother. He was a better person than you'll ever be."

Roxy made her way into the living room, sitting down along with the other family members, determinedly not looking in the direction of Faith, who was playing with Remus cheerfully near the fireplace, blissfully unaware of what had just happened in the next room over between her mother and her aunt.

Roxy also refused to acknowledge that Emily had followed her into the living room and sat down in a chair opposite of Roxy, trying to catch her eyes despite the fact that Roxy continued to not look at her, mentally picturing scenarios in which she hit Emily in the face or curse her until she took back the lies and nasty comments about Freddie.

Teddy, oblivious as the rest of the family as to what had just happened, got to his feet just then, lifting the birthday boy into the air, showing him around the room before showering his younger son with kisses on the cheek.

Unlike Roxy, everyone else was still happy and excited for the party; unlike Roxy, they had not just had one of their childhood heroes ruined by someone who didn't know the truth about what they were even saying.

* * *

She gave Louis a grateful smile when he handed Roxy a piece of Will's birthday cake, doing her best to avoid his questioning glance and raised eyebrows when Louis noticed that Roxy's smile wasn't quite sincere, her expression containing barely-hidden annoyance.

"You okay, Rox?" he asked, sitting down next to her with his own piece of cake. "Is something bothering you? Do you want to talk about things?"

Roxy shook her head, puzzled by Louis' behaviour. She'd never been particularly close to the youngest of Uncle Bill's children, seeing him mostly as the final third of master pranksters that had included Freddie and James back when they were all of Hogwarts' age.

He ruffled her hair like she were a small child and gave Roxy a crooked grin when she opened her mouth to snap at him, sticking his tongue out at her before laughing like he'd just told an absolutely hilarious joke.

"You can talk to me, Roxy," Louis pushed, cocking his head at his younger cousin. "Whatever's on your mind, I'd love to hear all about it—please, tell me all of your woes, your fears, your deepest fantasies. Of course, I'll have to charge you a Knut per minute but the first twenty minutes will be free since you're family."

Roxy lightly hit his chest, barely able to keep herself from laughing. "You're an ass, you know that? Absolutely jus the worst." She took a bite of cake, making a face at the intensely sweet flavour of the blue icing.

"But you love me for it, stop...please...stop pretending like you don't want to spill all of your secrets to me. After all, don't I just have the most trusting face you've ever seen in your life?" He craned his neck to locate his girlfriend, who was trying to make her way through the crowd of Weasleys. Louis raised his hand, catching her eye. "Just ask Rayna," he told Roxy as his girlfriend sat down on the other side of Louis on the couch.

"Ask me what, exactly?" Rayna kissed him on the cheek, stealing a bite of Louis' cake and giving him a crooked grin when he made small noises of protest.

"About how trustworthy I am," Louis explained, still with a big grin on his face as he looked between Rayna and Roxy, raising his eyebrows. "Wouldn't you say that I'm just full of trust, Rayna? The most trustworthy person you've probably ever met? And because I'm the most trustworthy person you know, Roxy should trust me enough to tell me why she isn't happy, don't you think? Doesn't that seem reasonable?"

Rayna made an amused face at her boyfriend before shaking her head and chuckling. "Leave the poor dear alone, Louis. If she doesn't want to talk about her problems then let her keep to herself. I wouldn't be dating you if we told each other everything that bothered each other. We'd probably go crazy and try to choke one another for being so obnoxious."

Something inside of Roxy suddenly pulled her to speak and, brow furrowed, she looked over at Louis and sighed heavily. If anyone knew the truth about Freddie, Louis would be one of the best people to ask, having been a good friend of her brother's despite the two year age gap between them both.

"Was Freddie a bad boyfriend?" she asked quietly, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "Did he and Emily really not love each other by the time that he died? Was he—was he actually a bad person to her?"

Louis blinked at her, mouth opening as he tried to formulate an appropriate answer. He looked wildly around the room, gaze falling on Emily and Faith on the other side of the room. "Did she tell you that?" Louis asked, turning back to Roxy.

Roxy didn't need to ask who 'she' was; the nineteen year old scowled in Emily's direction and nodded tersely.

Louis ran his hands over his face, taking a deep breath before he replied, his voice low and strained as he spoke. "Listen, Roxy..." he replied slowly, closing his eyes for a moment before Louis continued. "Freddie was...I mean that he...he and Emily, they, er, weren't ever going to last, despite, uh, what we all hoped, okay? Their personalities were simply too different and they were fighting and threatening to break up just as often as they were kissing and professing their love for each other—perhaps even more so. You wouldn't have ever seen the way they were around each other because Freddie ensured you were never near him while Emily came by, but I can tell you that they were never really in love. They would have broken up eventually, if he hadn't, uh...well, if he hadn't died, to be truthful."

"So she was telling the truth, then? Freddie wasn't a good boyfriend or a—a good person?" Roxy had tears in her eyes and she angrily brushed them away, wishing whoever had cursed her with emotions had never bothered her in the first place.

Louis looked cautiously over at Rayna, the two of them sharing a private understanding before Louis turned to face Roxy once more. "Freddie was a good person and he probably would have been a great boyfriend if given the right person—Emily happened to not be the right person, it just turned out."

Roxy shook her head, shoving the cake back at Louis. He fumbled for the plate, dropping both Roxy's and his own and watched as they fell to the floor, landing in a smashed, blue pile. Roxy stepped over the cake as she left the room, waving her hand wildly when Louis called out her name to get her to come back.

"I just need to be alone for a little bit," she explained to various family members who kept turning towards Roxy to ask where she was going. "I need to think about some things, please don't follow me. I just need to be by myself."

Roxy stomped upstairs, barely focusing on where she was going until she stumbled across the same old door with the faded square in the wood where her dad and uncle had once hung up a sign. Feeling drawn to the room, she pressed her hand on the door, smiling softly when it opened with a low clicking sound. This was Dad's old room; though she could not explain it to herself, Roxy knew it was exactly where she needed to go right then.

She opened the door, stepping inside; Roxy gave no mind to the light switch or the closed and heavy curtains that made the room dark. In fact, that was exactly what she needed at that moment as she collapsed on the mattress in the middle of her father's old bedroom and cried until she fell asleep a quivering mess.

* * *

Roxy found herself back in the destroyed streets of Diagon Alley, kneeling in the destruction of her childhood home, ash falling around her like rain. She looked up, staring at the stormy clouds above her head, threatening to _actually_ rain on her if she stayed out in the open for too long.

Perhaps if it did rain that would put some of the burning fires out and do something good so that nothing more would collapse in a pile of twisted, melted brick and wood.

She reached into her robes' pocket, pulling out her wand as Roxy slowly rolled on the heels of her feet and stood up, turning her head slowly from side to side to see the destruction of Diagon Alley. Her pants and the lower half of her robes were covered in ash and dust, but Roxy only scowled and cast a quick Scouring Charm to clean herself off.

Nothing around her seemed too much worse off than the last time she'd had this dream; the streets were still devoid of life and were instead covered in debris, with fires wildly tearing away at what little intact structures remained.

Even the creepy version of her brother was long gone, abandoned her like everyone else, not that she minded right then. The last person Roxy wanted to see at that exact moment was anyone who looked like her destroyed hero of an older brother. The less she saw of Freddie or anything that looked like Freddie right then, the better.

Taking a few steps away from what had been Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, Roxy took a deep breath, wondering she would find anyone else around here before she reached one of the end streets of Diagon Alley, or if she truly was here entirely alone, with no other living creature around for several kilometres, all other life drawn away by something she didn't understand in the slightest.

But why was she here if there was no one else around? And why was she even here to begin with? It didn't make sense for anyone to be here in the dark and destroyed streets of Diagon Alley and it certainly didn't make sense for her to be here either.

Roxy starting walking down the main street, mentally noting to herself every time she recognised a building whenever she passed by. Her heart fell a little more with each wrecked building—so far there were no signs that she wasn't the only one left, the only one who was, strangely, left behind in the wreckage to wander amongst flames and almost entirely destroyed buildings.

In front of her was the crumbled columns of Gringotts, the roof of the building split down the middle and laying halfway off the staircase.

She paused, looking up in amazement at the destroyed bank. If there had been anyone inside, they were no doubt long dead, as Roxy couldn't see the doors that lead into the building back when they had still been accessible—and she'd never heard of another way in or out of the now destroyed Gringotts.

What had happened here? The question wouldn't leave her thoughts—who had the power to destroy everything she'd grown up with? Was it possible that this was all done by the Faceless One in the act of war that he had promised so many times already?

A scratching noise came from her left side, making Roxy jump and turn around, wand raised in the air, ready to blast at anything that came her way.

"Hello?" she called out, then clapped a hand over her mouth, ducking quickly into the shadows of the destroyed Gringotts, cursing herself for being dumb enough to make noise and attract any possible monsters in the area.

A red-haired girl slipped into the street, her face lit by the setting sun, revealing her pale, freckled skin and grim scowl as she turned her head in both directions, looking around for something. Was she searching for Roxy—or something else?

The girl looked behind her for a brief glance before taking a few steps forward, holding up her hand as her facial expressions morphed from despair and frustration to somehow almost...happy? It wasn't quite a smile—the girl's face was not meant for smiling, Roxy could tell—but she was pleased by something.

"I know you're here," said the girl, taking several more steps forward, making Roxy nervous. Did the girl know she was hiding in the shadows of Gringotts? Was the girl speaking to Roxy? "You don't have to hide any more, I'm not here to hurt you, okay? I'm your friend—you can trust me. There's no need to stay out of sight, I'm not here to hurt you."

Roxy's eyes widened as she tried to flatten herself against the wall as much as possible. She did not want to be seen, did not want to be approached by the strange redhead that was smiling grimly in her direction.

"Roxanne?" The girl moved even closer, brow furrowing as she walked in Roxy's direction. "Roxanne Weasley, right? Listen, we know each other—er, we _will_ know each other, at least. I don't think you've reached the right point in the time-line just yet, considering you ran away when I showed up, but you will know me soon enough. My name is Ruby Weasley. I'm your cousin. Please, come out."

"What?" Roxy couldn't help but gasp; she mentally swore at herself again, but it was too late. The girl turned directly in her direction and gave Roxy another tight-lipped smile.

"There's really no reason to hide any more. Just look at me. Don't I look like Lily Potter? Don't I look like a Weasley? I swear I'm your cousin Ruby. I'm not here to hurt you."

Which, as far as Roxy was concerned, was the sort of creepy and suspicious thing that people only said when they wanted to hurt you. She decided to stay put instead of risking her life.

That did not stop the Ruby imposter as she kept approaching, coming closer and closer to where Roxy was hiding. She'd have to make a run for it before the fake Ruby reached her, yet despite knowing this, Roxy could not convince herself to flee.

"Roxanne, I am not the threat here." The fake Ruby held her hand out in Roxy's direction in a beckoning motion, now only two metres away from where Roxy was hiding. "Can you please stop hiding and show me your face? I already know you're there so hiding is only wasting _both_ our times. Come out and talk to me, okay?"

Roxy took a deep breath, hoping she wasn't about to make a big mistake; just in case, she kept her wand held firmly in the direction of the possible Ruby's head. "Prove that you're Ruby Weasley—prove it or I'm leaving now."

"My name is Ruby Anne Potter Weasley," the girl said in a vaguely annoyed tone, letting her hand fall by her side as she spoke." "My biological parents are Lily Luna Potter and Tolkien Ceylon Smith and my mother is Lucy Helen Weasley. I was born on the sixth of April in 2029 at St Mungo's. I was a Gryffindor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from 2040 to 2046 and I am one of thirty-two cousins of my particular generation. Anything else you want to know, or do you think I'm lying?"

It was possible that much of this information was readily available to the public, but as Roxy watched the girl speak and got a better glimpse of her, she could tell this was someone who either _was_ a Weasley or knew the Weasley family extremely well.

She stepped out of the shadows, coming face to face with the girl who claimed to be Ruby Weasley.

Ruby was even older than Roxy was, though not by a whole lot—maybe three or four years at the most—with long, wavy red hair and the same brown eyes of Lily and much of the other Potter-Weasleys. She was on the shorter side, maybe a centimetre taller than Lily but not much taller than Rose; Ruby still stood higher than Roxy, but most people then. More importantly, though, was the tense expression on her face and the signs of worry on her forehead. She was someone who was obviously anxious on a near-constant basis.

Roxy supposed she'd be anxious all the time, too, if Diagon Alley were destroyed and abandoned in her life as well.

"Roxanne Weasley," said Ruby with her tight smile; her eyes focused on Roxy's still drawn wand and she nodded approvingly. "Caution is good. You took the smart approach, making me prove myself to you."

Roxy frowned at the girl. "How do you know I'm the real Roxanne Weasley then, and not some imposter pretending to be her in order to gain your trust?"

"You'd have to have used Polyjuice Potion to make yourself look like my cousin Roxy and besides that, any hair of hers would only make you look like the forty-seven year old Roxy of _my_ time rather than someone who doesn't even look twenty years old yet."

"I'm nineteen."

"Yeah, see? Not even twenty yet, just like I said." Ruby looked away, brown eyes flickering in the dying sunlight. "It's good you're here, though. It gives me time to warn you about stuff."

"Warn? About what?"

"The daemon you guys call the Faceless One..he's going to attack the wizarding community soon—what is it, 2029?"

"Uh, yeah, July of 2029."

Ruby nodded and frowned. Behind them was a growling noise that made the hair on Roxy's arms raise up. Whatever that was that had made such a bestial noise was no friend of theirs, she knew that immediately.

The redhead looked around anxiously before continuing in a low tone. "Before you turn twenty, he's going to attack the wizarding world and it's going to be..."

The growling was closer this time—too close. Both females jumped and held their wands up to face the shadows. Roxy's heart was pounding wildly as she imagined any number of things that could come off of the dark and attack them.

Ruby reached out to grab Roxy's hands and look into her eyes with burning intensity. "You need to go back _now_ ," she said, shaking her head. "You aren't safe here. Please, just go before they come and it becomes too late."

"But you haven't told me about—"

"You aren't safe here!" Ruby insisted, but Roxy stood firmly in place. "Fine, one more question, if you insist, but then you absolutely need to leave."

"How am I even experiencing all of this?" asked Roxy, the only question that immediately came to mind.

Ruby smirked coyly, though there was still obvious panic in her eyes. "Ask my mum, why don't you, when you wake up again?"

Just then a snarling monster jumped out and grabbed at Ruby, making them both scream.

"Run!" Ruby yelled at her, waving her wand in Roxy's direction. "Get out of here, now, hurry! Go, go! You aren't safe!" The monster overtook her then, and she fell to the ground in a mass of screams and flailing limbs.

Roxy took off, not looking back.

* * *

She woke with a start in her father's darkened room.


	51. To lose a friend

The others often that her head was too far in the clouds, that she never focused, that she was too spacey, too airy, too 'out there'. When she'd started dating Luke in her sixth year, everyone told her they wouldn't last because he didn't really love her because he _couldn't_ really love her—Luke Brenning was just using her because she was naive.

She didn't know, even now, if that was necessarily true, that he'd used her, but the relationship didn't last. Afterwards, Lucy stopped dating altogether, stopped seeing love and bright futures wherever she went. Part of Lucy's innocence was destroyed at the hands of love. Or, what she had presumed was love anyway.

But now, at twenty-four years old, she thought she'd found love for real this time. It _was_ real, this time, she told herself. They were meant for each other. She wouldn't tell her family and friends, though, just in case they tried to say the same things they'd said about Luke. She would wait a while longer before letting anyone know.

Lucy wouldn't let anyone ruin her this time.

* * *

"Hey, can you watch Ruby for the weekend?" Lucy asked her over the Floo network, flashing Roxy a friendly smile that would bring anyone to their knees in agreement. "Fulfil some of your godmother duties? I'll love you forever and buy you lunch for the next week if you say yes. Oh, please, Roxy? She's a very good baby, hardly ever cries."

Roxy rolled her eyes. "I never officially said yes to being her godmother, you know." But she was going to say yes no matter what and Lucy _knew_ that she was going to say yes; there was really no point in fighting it.

That was how she found herself now, sitting on the bedroom floor at her flat, staring at the four and a half month old who laid quietly on a blank, only occasionally kicking her legs in the air and making a gurgling noise but otherwise staying much calmer than Roxy expected of an infant as young as Ruby.

She'd never imagined that there would be a baby living with her, even if it _was_ only for a weekend since she wasn't a big fan of small children.

The thought reminded Roxy that she hadn't even bothered asking Lucy what she was doing this weekend that prevented the older girl from taking care of her own daughter. Whatever it was, though, Roxy would have probably still said yet, but that didn't mean that she wasn't bewildered by her own mistake of forgetting to ask ahead of time.

What was she even supposed to do with a baby? Sure, Lucy had given her enough formula and nappies for each of Ruby's meals and she assured Roxy that the infant wasn't particularly fussy, as babies went, but Roxy knew almost nothing about how babies worked. What if Ruby got sick? What if she wouldn't go to sleep and cried through the whole night?

Or, worst of all, what if the Faceless One or a minion of his showed up at the flat and tried to hurt Ruby or Roxy, taking advantage of their situation?

So she was more than a little on edge at the moment, which was why Roxy was sitting on the floor and watching Ruby's every move, just in case something happened. Roxy herself had not done more than blink or yawn or stretch her arms for several hours, too busy keeping her eyes on Ruby the entire time to make sure she was fine.

There was a knock on the door just then, making Roxy jump and Ruby let out a small noise at the suddenness before settling calmly back on her blanket, unimpressed by her unofficial godmother's erratic and nerve-wracking behaviour.

"Hey, Rox? Can I come in?" Aniya's voice was muffled by the door, though her usual happy tone was not hindered in the slightest by the layer of thick wood that separated her from the occupants of the bedroom. "I made sandwiches if you're interested and I brought some pre-heated formula for Ruby. I figured it's time enough for both of you to have a proper meal."

Roxy turned to look at the clock on her desk, mildly curious and realised that it was just past eight-thirty at night. She and Ruby had been sitting in her room for nearly three hours.

"Come on in," Roxy called back to Aniya; hearing the door click quietly as Aniya pushed it open and smelling the sandwiches her flat mate had prepared, Roxy felt her stomach grumbled as it finally noticed that she hadn't eaten anything since lunch more than eight hours ago.

Aniya smiled at Roxy, settling down on the bed and handing over the tray of sandwiches before she scooped Ruby into her lap and started feeding her from the bottle of formula in her hands.

"So how is baby-sitting going?" she asked Roxy, who shrugged uncertainly in response. "Well, she's still alive and in one piece, so you can't be doing too terribly. Yet, at least."

Roxy rolled her eyes. "I haven't moved from this spot since we got home because I'm afraid if I do, she'll roll off the bed and crack her skull open or something equally as awful."

"I think her skull is fine," joked Aniya, running her free hand over Ruby's head and giving her flat mate a teasing smile. "Relax, Roxy, you'll do well. There's not much you can really do to mess up a four month old in only forty-eight hours anyway. It's not as though you can teach her dark magic in only one weekend, so I doubt there's a whole lot else you can do to make a real mess of things before Lucy comes back."

Roxy said nothing, her mouth full of sandwich as she watched Aniya continue to feed Ruby. Then, swallowing what was in her mouth, she took a deep breath, steeling herself to tell Aniya what she'd seen in her dreams concerning Ruby.

"I had a weird dream while at my grandmother's house last week," she began nervously, hoping Aniya wouldn't think what she was about to say was absolutely crazy.

Aniya raised her eyebrows, curious. "Oh? You know, they say in Divination that every dream has a meaning to it that's connected to real life, like a big black dog to symbolise death or dreaming of going to space when you really just want more adventure and excitement in your life."

"Well, I don't know if I necessarily believe in all that dream stuff, but I can definitely tell you that what I saw last week in my dream was probably connected to real life, though maybe not my life right _now_. See, I saw Ruby—" Roxy gave the infant a wary look, "—except that she was an adult and was running around the destroyed streets of Diagon Alley. She warned me that the Faceless One would attack us before I turn twenty."

"Oh, wow," Aniya replied, humming thoughtfully as she hefted Ruby up in her arms and patted the little girl on the back until she burped. "I didn't realise that you were able to see into the future, too. Do you suppose that there's Seers' blood in the Weasley family as well?"

Roxy shook her head. "I don't think so; I've just been having the same dream over and over, always about the forgotten ruins of Diagon Alley, which I've seen several times since last summer. But this is the first time I've actually seen anyone else or spoken to them about what's going on."

She decided not to tell Aniya about seeing the fake Freddie in previous dreams until she could understand his existence in the dream for herself. No need to further complicate things by throwing in false versions of her brother.

"Perhaps..." Aniya mumbled to herself before looking back at Roxy. "I don't really understand it all myself, but that's not what's really important here, is it? If the Faceless One is going to attack us by the end of September, then we need to warn the others and start preparing for war, don't you think? Though isn't it interesting that Ruby was the one to speak to you in that strange future? Do you suppose she has the power to _See_ what is to come or what has already happened like Lily can do? It would make sense, inheriting the skill, passing it on, mother to daughter."

"Lily isn't her mum," replied Roxy almost on reflex, having grown used to telling herself that in the past several months. Give it another year or two and she might actually start to believe it.

Aniya blinked slowly at her before shrugging. "Okay, but still, we should warn the others, don't you think? I mean, it's only fair, isn't it?" She frowned, looking down at Ruby, who yawned, her little hands balling into fists as she started falling asleep. "It's weird to imagine Ruby ever being an adult when she's so young now."

The infant cooed in response; Roxy merely continued to silently inhale the sandwiches that Aniya had brought her, wondering what they were going to do next.

* * *

When Roxy woke up the next morning, she rolled over onto her side and blearily opened her eyes, taking in the sight of Ruby's empty crib, though still too caught in her sleep to process what she was looking at. Roxy yawned, stretching, and let her surroundings slowly sink in while she tried to wake up fully.

Then, just as she realised that an empty crib meant that Ruby was missing, she jumped up in shock and rushed over to the abandoned bassinet, an expression of pure horror on her face. She looked around the room frantically as though she would somehow magically conjure up the little girl by wanting it badly enough; unfortunately, Roxy did not have the power to summon infants on pure willpower, so she threw open the door to continue her search.

"Hey, Roxy," Aniya called cheerfully from the kitchen, followed by a happy gurgling noise. "We're in here—Jo got called into work, so she's been gone for a while, but I was thinking maybe we could take this time to introduce Ruby to some wholesome muggle culture."

Sure enough, the infant was sitting calmly in a high chair, propped up by pillows as Aniya held her bottle up for Ruby to suck on.

"Sorry for scaring you first thing in the morning but I could tell that she was about to start crying and wake you up, so I figured it would just be easier to get Ruby and start feeding her now rather than let her get upset and make a huge fuss."

"Mm." Roxy shuffled past the table, making a face at the baby as she poured herself a bowl of cereal and placed two pieces of bread into Aniya's weird machine that she called a 'toaster', then shuffled back to the table, setting her breakfast down and pouring herself a cup of milk, wrinkling her nose distastefully at the sight of Aniya's orange juice.

"What a wonderful morning person you are," Aniya joked, which prompted Roxy to make a face in her direction as well. "Very mature. Between you and Jo, though, how did you two ever wake up in time for class?" Aniya shook her head playfully. "I'm almost surprised you even woke up at all."

"Mornings are stupid," Roxy muttered in reply, scooping a spoonful of cereal into her mouth. "Mornings are for people who have too much time on their hands. I'd rather take advantage and sleep in as long as possible."

Aniya laughed and got to her feet, taking the now finished bottle from Ruby and moving to the sink to wash it out. "I used to baby-sit my little cousins all the time so I've had plenty of experience dealing with small children," she said casually, easily interpreting Roxy's questioning gaze.

(That or she was looking at Roxy's thoughts again.)

"You have cousins?" Roxy asked, surprised. No, she and Aniya had not been friends for even a year, but Roxy felt bad that she'd never thought at least once to ask Aniya about the rest of her family beyond her psychotic father.

"Mmhm, from my aunt—a boy and two girls, all a lot younger than me. Like Henry is...eight years younger and Kimi is...thirteen years younger? Then Leslie falls somewhere in between the two." She shrugged and set the bottle aside on the counter.

Roxy let out a forlorn breath of air. "I feel like you'd do better as Ruby's godmother than I would. You actually _like_ little kids and you know how to properly care for a child, whereas I've never had any experience. Besides that, I don't think that 'godmother' is ever a duty that should be given to someone younger than the mother—especially a nineteen year old. And yes, I know you're nineteen, too, but that's beside the point."

She looked over to Aniya, who wore an amused expression; the shorter girl raised her eyebrows at Roxy, smiling. In response, Roxy rolled her eyes and sighed once more.

"Yeah, I know it's in his biographies and the history books and it gets brought up any time Teddy's in the papers, but this is _different_. Uncle Harry was a hero by the time he became a godfather. All I can do is screw up potions' ingredients and lose important documents."

"I think you'll be fine. I mean, if you really _did_ see Ruby as an adult, she couldn't have suffered from anything _too_ bad, so you must not have messed up her childhood, right?"

"Aniya," Roxy said slowly in a tone of exasperation, "I saw Ruby in the destroyed streets of Diagon Alley with monstrous wolf creatures all around. I wouldn't say that was meeting her in the best of context. For all we know, the whole place only gets destroyed because of a failure on my part! I could be condemning us all to die."

Aniya laughed and waved her hands at Roxy. "That sort of thinking is nonsense. In the grand scheme of time, you really aren't important enough to affect the entire future like that. If Diagon Alley is going to be destroyed, then there's not really much we can do about it. You're no more important to deciding the future than the flap of a butterfly's wings."

"Thanks for making me feel special."

"You're welcome. That's what friends are for, after all."

* * *

Later that day, with Ruby growing fussy and restless—like a normal baby for once—the two girls had decided to Transfigure an empty storage crate into a pram and take the little girl on a walk around the neighbourhood. After all, fresh air and sunlight was supposed to be good for small children and maybe it would tire her out enough that Ruby would fall asleep when they were done walking her around.

Ruby did not agree, apparently, as she squirmed fiercely while Roxy tried to strap her in and then began screaming, her gummy mouth spraying spittle everywhere a Roxy fumbled with the locks on her seat.

"Here, let me," Aniya said calmly, taking the locks and straps from Roxy. She knelt down and slowly eased the infant into her pram, coaxing her into staying still long enough for Aniya to get her into place, humming softly to Ruby and running her hands over the girl's arms and legs.

Ruby fell quiet and stopping wriggling, giving Aniya the baby's equivalent of a smile before laying back in the pram while Aniya got everything put together. After she managed to tug the last clasp into place, Aniya stood up and grinned at her friend, who stared back at her in awe.

"How do you _do_ that?" Roxy asked breathlessly, shaking her head in amazement. "It's like you can control her thoughts to make her do what you want." She squinted at the other girl. "You _can't_ control Ruby, can you? Or is that your secret—mind control powers?"

Aniya laughed at the question. "I'm not powerful enough to do anything like that, Rox. I can only see thoughts and memories—I can't manipulate them or anything. It's very unlikely that anyone can do something like that."

"Hm." Roxy made a face at her friend and took the handles of the pram, pushing the plastic contraption towards the front door. "Let's go for a walk then, Madame Baby Whisperer."

They carried the pram down the steps slowly, noting appreciatively that it was a rather sunny day, nice for taking a walk through the neighbourhood. There were others out in the street as well—witches doing their weekly shopping, wizards chatting on the street corners about politics, children running around the adults, yelling and playing. Teenagers free from school flew by on brooms that brushed against the windows of the flats they passed by and the owners of those windows threw them open to yell about the hooligans outside having no respect any more—back when _they_ were young, children were seen and not heard!

It was a normal day in Diagon Alley; no signs of a war about to be waged or a massive death toll at the hands of a sociopathic daemon could found anywhere today. Things were going exactly as they were expected to.

Aniya greeted everyone they passed, waving at them and asking how they were, how their day was going if their families were in good health. Roxy, on the other hands, couldn't help but be amazed by how many people Aniya seemingly knew. Personally, she hardly ever spoke to any of their neighbours unless she was forced to, but Aniya could put a name to nearly every face that crossed their path.

"Do you just know everyone or something?" Roxy asked jokingly. "I don't even remember everyone from our year's name and we only graduated last June. How can you hold so many names in your head all at once?"

Aniya shrugged. "I guess it's just easier for me. Though I will admit that sometimes I cheat and look into people's heads to pull out their names or what they're thinking about right then to make them feel more welcome and happy when I talk to them."

"How scandalous!" Roxy laughed at how silly it seemed, imagining Aniya digging through someone's mind just to find out how they were doing or their opinion on last week's game of Quidditch.

The two girls kept walking down the street, chatting quietly about the nice weather and the other people they saw on their journey; Aniya pointed out everyone they passed by, telling Roxy what they were thinking or what fresh memories were bubbling just underneath the surface of their conscious mind.

"See her?" Aniya asked, pointing at a tall black woman in her mid-forties who was sitting outside one of the flats, eyes closed and with a small child playing on the ground at her feet. Roxy nodded, looking at the woman thoughtfully. "Her name is Masika Strickland. She's forty-four years old, married three times, divorced twice, mother of four. She comes out here every day at the same time with her youngest in the hopes that something exciting will happen to her, even though it never does. Sometimes she reads muggle romance novels and dreams of finding someone like the men in her books even though she doesn't really believe in love any more. She's also thinking about divorcing her most recent husband and running away because he never comes home until late at night and always smells like someone else's perfume."

"Wow," Roxy replied, craning her neck to look behind her at the woman, wondering what kind of life she had lived to end up at this place in the world. "Your powers are amazing, do you know that, Aniya? Like, that is super weird, but also really cool at the same time."

Aniya grinned at her. "I don't need you to tell me that, I can see it in your head." The smile dropped slightly from her face and when she spoke again, her voice did not hold as much enthusiasm as it previously had. I can see _everything_ in _everyone's_ heads. Sometimes it gets to be too much, looking at what everyone else is thinking, what they're remembering—the endless cycle of meaningless thoughts over and over until I want to scream and bash my head into a wall to shut all the noise out for even a few minutes."

Roxy took one hand off the pram, squeezing Aniya's shoulder and giving her a consoling look. "I'm sorry you have to suffer through this. I'm sorry that your dad put you through all of this crap."

"Oh, it's not like any of this is your fault," Aniya said in an airy tone, shifting moods once more. She waved her hands at Roxy. "Only I never had the courage to tell him to bugger off, did I—and by the time I could have, the Ministry claimed him again, leaving me with nothing to say."

"Why _was_ your father arrested again, if you don't mind my asking?"

Aniya shook her head, still speaking in a breezy, flippant tone that didn't quite match the words coming out of her mouth. "Just for what he did to us—and for continuing to practise dark magic when the Ministry ordered him not to back when he was first released. It was only because he was arrested this time around that they even learned about what we could do and they slapped more charges on him for attempting to create human weapons, which is unnaturally ridiculous when you stop to consider that the Ministry is doing the exact same thing right now and have been doing it longer, on a much broader scale than my father. I suppose they just don't want any competition for worst people ever is all."

She shoved her hands in her pockets and walked a little faster, shoulders hunched; Aniya looked like she wanted to run away or hit something, but she only gave Roxy a forcibly cheery smile, kicked at the ground, and muttered a quick curse at her father for existing.

Roxy, meanwhile, had no idea what she was expected to say in a situation like this, so she stayed quiet instead, keeping her hands firmly on the handlebars of Ruby's pram, not saying a word lest it made things worse.

"But who cares about him, right?" Aniya continued, smiling at Roxy while inclinations to murder danced in her eyes. "I mean, all that bastard ever did was ruin my entire life and set in motion a chain of events that resulted in Aleah being killed and Anarya going through what I'm sure is just unbearable suffering that no one should ever experience."

"Do you think he might have been trying to protect you and your sisters in his own twisted way?" Roxy asked cautiously. "Maybe h was trying to keep you safe, but this was the only way he knew how, even though it was wrong."

"My father is no better than people like Itawa or McClane, using children for their own purpose, their own personal war without giving any thought to the children they hurt in the process! I'm not someone else's weapon, Roxy, and I don't want to be used without my permission! Can't I be independent for once without some adult trying to convince me that what they want to be done will be fulfilled in my best interest?! I know they're lying to me, I know none of them care about my well-being!"

"Aniya," Roxy muttered urgently, tapping her friend's arm. "Aniya, people are looking at us. You're yelling—they're staring at us, Aniya."

And people _were_ staring, pausing mid-stride or mid-conversation to turn in their direction, but it was not like how one stopped to watch a spectacle unfold. They had been waiting for something—an opening of some sort—and Aniya had given it to them by yelling.

Roxy grabbed her friend, wanting to pull her off the street, but she had realised the enormity of the situation a moment too late and so, was too slow in stopping a middle-aged wizard wearing dark blue robes from pulling out his wand and sending part of the building above them flying into pieces, causing a chunk of brick and stone larger than her torso to fall in their direction, making Roxy scream and pull Ruby's pram out of harm's way.

"Get out of the bloody way, Aniya!" she yelled in the direction of the smaller girl, but Aniya had frozen in place, stuck staring at the falling rubble as it came down on her.

Aniya collapsed to the ground, causing Roxy to scream again, but she could do nothing as the people on the street ran at Roxy and Ruby, pulling them away from where Aniya was lying prone, still and silent. Their attackers moved like people possessed, their eyes blank and motions sluggish and harsh. The people were silent—too silent for any normal human to ever be, as though their breath had stopped and their hearts were no longer beating.

A woman in her late twenties or early thirties stepped from behind the man who had blown up the building. She was of Asian descent, undeniably beautiful, average height, with steely grey eyes and a cold smile; the woman wore a simple black dress and as she approached Roxy's direction, it became clear exactly who this woman was: Trinh Itawa—the girl who was supposedly destined to lead the army against the foes of Project Starkid in just a few year's time.

Trinh turned her cruel gaze towards Roxy, lips curling into a smirk. "So you're the one I've been warned about?" She looked Roxy up and down, then laughed. "You certainly don't look like much and I don't sense any great power from you. How could one so weak pose any sort of threat to me?" Trinh turned slowly to look in the direction of Aniya's motionless body. "Your friend there, however—oh, _she_ certainly does have the sort of power my army needs."

"You can't touch her!" Roxy yelled, trying to move toward her friend but finding that she was too to Ruby's pram, frozen in place like everyone else had been earlier.

"Oh can't I?" Trinh smirked down at her, chuckling coldly, before glancing towards the man in the blue robes. "Be a dear for me, will you, and fetch the girl you threw so carelessly into the rubble? And is she's hurt in the slightest, I'll slit your throat, understand?" The statement made her laugh. "Well, I'll do that anyway, but I'll make you conscious the whole time if she's hurt."

The man nodded listlessly and shambled towards Aniya, as blank and empty as everyone else on the street. He leant over and scooped up her small body and shuffled back to where Trinh was standing, holding the girl up to indicate she was still breathing.

"Good, I'm glad you aren't entirely incompetent," she snapped. "Now, little Roxy, I suppose that it's time that I and your little friend here were off. Good-bye, Roxanne Weasley. I'll enjoy killing you after the war, watching you on your hands and knees, begging me to show you mercy just before I end your miserable, pathetic excuse of a life."

She grabbed the wrist of the man holding Aniya and Disapparated, leaving Roxy to stare after them in horror, unable to do anything about it.

Slowly, the other occupants of the street came back to their senses, shaking their heads and looking around at their surroundings with expressions of complete and utter confusion. A few noticed the destroyed section of wall and began to mutter nervously to their neighbours about dark magic and the return of dark lords.

Roxy, her paralysed body coming unstuck without any warning, clung to the pram and nearly collapsed from sorrow; Ruby let out a small wail, as though it had just occurred to the infant that her newest favourite person had been snatched away from her and she was now stuck with Roxy, who didn't know what she was doing.

"Aniya!" Roxy sobbed quietly, laying her head on the handlebar of the pram. "Aniya, Aniya, come back—please, Aniya, please, I'm begging you, come back/"

But Aniya did not come back— _could not come back—_ because she and Trinh were long gone, leaving Roxy by herself to cry bitterly, not paying any attention to the strange looks she was being given by the few other people in the street who weren't currently panicking about evil magic consuming the streets of Diagon Alley once more.

Her friend was gone—Merlin only knew where—and Roxy knew her heart was going to crack from the pain of it if she didn't make everything right.


	52. Mr Potter's secret: Part 1

**_Just because I've been asked more than once about this: Roxy is half-black; Aniya is Chinese; Kieran is white; Jo is Greek-French._**

* * *

After she dropped Ruby off at Vic's and sent a letter to Lucy explaining the situation that she was currently in, Roxy Apparated straight over to Albus and Scorpius' flat, knocking loudly on the door and shouting their names through the mail slot.

"Will you stop that damnable shouting, young lady?" demanded the older woman who lived a few doors down. Roxy had seen her around the building before but had no idea what her name was—only that Albus said she complained all the time and about nearly everything under the sun that there was to complain about.

"Sorry, ma'am," she said brusquely, then turned back to the door and continued to bang her fist on the wooden surface, calling out, "Albus! Scorpius! Are you in there? Open the door—open the door right _now_ if you don't mind! I need to tell you something rather important, so bloody open up, you pricks, or I'll start breaking the damn thing down myself!"

"Excuse me!" cried the old woman, now entirely outside of her personal living quarters. She glared at Roxy, putting her hands on her hips like a scolding mother who was disciplining a particularly naughty child. "You are in a public space right now, little girl, and I demand that you show some proper respect, do you hear me? Now, I pay good money for a place like this and I don't need little brats like you making so much noise all the time."

Roxy rolled her eyes, not bothering to even look at the old lady as she spoke. "Listen, I'm really busy here, okay? I'm just trying to get my _stupid cousin_ to open the damn door and I will make just as much noise as I need to, so go back into your house and leave me the hell alone, why don't you? Mind your own bloody business."

"Well, I never!" the old woman declared loudly, placing her hand over her chest and giving Roxy a scandalised look. "I have half a mind to call the landlord up here—or—or an Auror! How would you like that, little miss, if I called an Auror in to arrest you for being a domestic disturbance? Because that's what happens to brats like you!"

"Hey, why don't you fuck off, lady? You can't really kick me out of here anyway, we both know that, and I'm busy. I need to—"

The door opened; Scorpius stuck his blond head out into the hallway, looking between Roxy and the old woman, who had gone completely red in the face from yelling.

"Er, hello?" he said in a confused tone, frowning at Roxy. "Hi, Mrs Griffiths." Scorpius nodded at his neighbour, who merely glared in response. "How is everything going today? Has your grandson recovered from Dragon Pox yet?"

"You tell that girl that she ought to shut up in a public space so decent people like me can enjoy their programmes. Why I couldn't hear a single word of the Cavine's Cauldron Show with all the noise this—this hooligan is making! And the nerve of her, the absolute language! Young people these days, no respect at all!"

"I was just trying to get him to open the door, dammit!" Roxy yelled back at her, knowing this was going to bring her any closer to bringing Aniya back but also feeling so full of rage about everything that has happened that she couldn't keep herself from letting the frustration and anger build up inside of her and blow all over the place.

"Okay, well this has a pretty easy solution, I'd say—that you two should just relax and Roxy can come inside with me and you, Mrs Griffiths, can go back to your wireless programmes peacefully okay? How does that sound?"

Roxy rolled her eyes, turning around just long enough to flip Mrs Griffiths off before pushing past Scorpius into his home, ignoring the horrified looks on the others' faces. She had more important things to focus on than acting maturely.

It was time for things to change. It was time to stop things from going any more horribly wrong than they already were. The Ministry had already taken Aniya from her, but they wouldn't get to steal any more children.

They would not get to ruin any more lives.

* * *

"So?" Albus asked, looking at Roxy, who was sitting on their couch with her arms crossed, a forlorn look in her eyes. "What exactly was so urgent that you had to have a shout with our elderly neighbour for no reason?"

"Trinh Itawa showed up on our street, somehow took over everyone's minds—perhaps some form of mass Imperio Curses, I'm not sure, though I don't think that's what it is—and then she stole Aniya right in front of me, Apparated off before I could stop them and—and I want her back!" Roxy's voice broke and she buried her face in her hands.

Albus moved to rub her gently on the back, murmuring comfortingly while Scorpius grabbed her a cup of water.

"Oh, Roxy, I can understand why you're upset and why you want to go after her, but we don't know _where_ in the Ministry they've been taking these kids or if they're even keeping them anywhere in the Ministry at all. We need to figure out where they are before we go running around and storming into places without knowing what we're getting into."

"But she's my friend!" Roxy cried, pushing away the cup that Scorpius tried to hand her. "I can't wait forever—what if she dies because we do nothing?"

"Roxy, how can we save her if we don't even know where she is?" Scorpius asked quietly. "They'll catch on soon enough if we break into the wrong places—it can't be kept a secret forever, you know that, Roxy."

Roxy shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes at the thought of never being able to see her friend again because they couldn't take risks just this once for the decency of saving Aniya from torture and brainwashing that may result in her death.

"She'll die, don't _you_ realise that?" she sobbed, crying more than she had in quite a long time, even when her brother and father died. It was like several years of pent up emotion was all coming out at once. "If we don't do anything, then she'll die and I will lose a very good friend and then—and then—and then I don't know _what_ I'll do!"

The two males shared uneasy looks, not sure how to make the situation better without outright lying to Roxy about the reality of the situation—that there was no way they could safely rescue Aniya and the other victims of Project Starkid without the proper information needed to find them.

But there was nothing that could be said, so they only stayed quiet; Scorpius offered her the cup of water but when she rejected it a second time, he shrugged and set the cup aside on the end table, wondering what to do.

"Roxy do you think that we could find a way to rescue her? Because unless you can give the Circle a place to look, I don't know that a whole lot of them will be crazy about doing something like this. It—it would be a suicide mission, trying to do something of this nature with absolutely no idea of what we'd be asking them to run into."

"What if I investigated where they take the victims? I could go by myself, not risk anyone else's life, and I could break into the Ministry or search around until I find out where they are and how to get them. Nobody else would have to be hurt."

"That could work," Scorpius said at the same time that Albus loudly told her, "Absolutely not, Roxy!"

They shared a look, both frowning in the direction of the other; Scorpius gave his husband a puzzled look, not sure why there was disagreement here. Why wasn't this an easy, smart solution to their problem?

"Al," he murmured in a low tone, craning his neck, "why can't we send just Roxy? I mean, it wouldn't draw much attention, would it? She could pretend to be visiting Molly or any number of your family members that works with the Ministry."

"No!" Albus insisted. He put a hand on Roxy, looking at her consolingly. "I don't mean to be derogatory or insulting but Roxy is one _very_ small girl. What is she going to do if someone attacks her, huh? Sure, she can use magic, but what if they're larger and stronger and try to overpower Roxy? We aren't going to do anything that will risk her life?"

"Well, what do you want to do then, Albus? What grandiose decisions are we making for someone who is a nearly twenty year old woman? Can't she decide what she wants to do?" Scorpius directed his attention to Roxy. "Don't you love when people make decisions for you? Or do you want to stand up for yourself and start running the show?"

She shrugged. Roxy couldn't think clearly any more. All she wanted was to get Aniya to safety and she didn't care how they had to do it to bring her back.

"Okay, wait," Albus said, holding his hands up. "Roxy, how long ago did they actually take Aniya, just so I have an understanding of this whole situation?"

"Uh, a few hours ago," she admitted quietly. Roxy knew from the look on her cousin's face that he thought she was overreacting just a bit, so she tried to backtrack and explain herself. "I—I told you the thing about Mrs Itawa, right? How they torture the—the children they take and y-you saw the papers, the lists of names of all those people who are no longer alive? You remember all of that, don't you? So you understand how important it is that we rescue her? Because I don't want her to be another name on a list of people who died before their time."

"No, I understand it perfectly, Roxy, but that doesn't mean I am willing to risk your life by sending you alone on a mission like that."

Scorpius looked at him sharply, appearing cross. "Then what would you have us do? Send someone else along with her and risk their life as well?"

"That—no, that's not what I'm saying at all," Albus muttered, shaking his head wildly. "I don't want to risk anyone's life." He tightened his jaw, a dark look in his eyes. "I will go with Roxy myself. It will seem that much more reasonable because a lot of people at the Ministry will only ever see me as Harry Potter's younger son, so they'll assume I've come to see him. Besides, I'll be able to protect Roxy were anything to happen."

"What if something were to happen to you?" Scorpius demanded of his husband, frustratedly glaring at him. "I don't want to lose you, either. I don't want to lose you most of all of the members of the Circle. What would I ever do if I lost you?"

Albus gave him an uneasy smile that contained no real humour in it. "I suppose you would have to marry Reece instead."

"Can we go now?" Roxy asked, looking desperately at her cousin. "I don't want to wait too long in case they find out what we're doing and move everyone and I certainly don't want them to bring any harm to Aniya because we took too long."

"I don't see why we can't head over to the Ministry now," Albus muttered thoughtfully before standing up to locate his owl. His voice carried into the living room as he called back to them, "I'll write to Dad and tell him that Roxy and I want to pay him a visit. I'm sure Dad won't mind. He adores Roxy and I'm not obnoxious about Dad's job, unlike the other two, so I don't think he'll say no to our being there."

"I don't like this," Scorpius grumbled to Roxy, still cross. "Albus may find you to be not strong enough to take care of yourself, but I know you. You'll keep each other safe, won't you?"

Her eyes dropped to the floor, but Roxy knew she would have to say yes. Albus was her family and Weasleys always protected each other no matter what. _Always._

So she nodded at Scorpius, who let out a heavy sigh, a great weight lifted from his chest. Roxy could not look in his direction, knowing that if she did, then she would start crying all over again, even if that didn't make any sense to do so.

They sat quietly, waiting for Albus to return; the only sounds were of traffic on the street outside and that of Roxy's own wildly beating heart. She heard, softly, the sound of Al and Scor's cat padding through another room out of sight, but other than that, the two only sat by each other, not saying a word.

"Okay, I've sent Cyrus off, so when either Dad or Ava send us a response, then we can head over there. Or..." He ran his hands through his hair, humming thoughtfully. "I suppose we could simply head over now and explain the situation ourselves." Albus glanced towards the window. "I didn't really need to send Cyrus, did I?"

"Not really, no" Scorpius replied, smiling gently. He got to his feet, moving over to where Albus was to give his husband a kiss. "I think it's cute how you never think these things out."

Roxy also stood up, looking at her cousin eagerly. They were going to rescue Aniya—they were finally going to do something, to take a stand against all of their seemingly endless enemies.

"Then we'll go now," Albus decided, reaching out to grab Roxy's hand. "Come on, we'll go the visitors way," he told her. "That means riding the Tube. I hope you don't get terribly sick in the underground. That'd be rather unfortunate and I don't have much for you to throw up into—and obviously we can't just charm it all away. So, er, try not to get sick, yeah?"

Roxy did not like the sound of that.

* * *

"Albus Potter and Roxanne Weasley, here to see Head Auror Harry Potter," Albus told the cool voice of the phone booth and then leant back as two metal name tags came rattling from the coin slot, bearing their names and the purpose of their visit. He handed Roxy's tag to her and clipped his own onto the front of his robes, giving her a small smile as the phone booth was heading to the Atrium. "Hold my hand," he told her and she quickly clutched onto him as the booth jolted then began to move downwards, out of sight of the muggle street.

Roxy would have probably fallen over if Albus wasn't holding her up, because this strange elevator shook and groaned every few seconds, sending her shoulder running towards the wall of the booth, bruising her skin.

"Careful there," warned Albus. "This damn thing is so old but no one ever bothers to fix it. I don't know _what_ they'll do when the elevator breaks down for good, but as long as I'm not inside when it does, that's perfectly fine with me."

The booth stopped moving as suddenly as it started, sending Roxy careening against the far wall; the cool voice welcomed them to the Ministry and Roxy, still clutching her cousin's hands, quickly stepped out.

Albus led her past the front desk, where they had their wands checked by a disinterested Ministry official and then directed them towards the interior elevator with a bored drawl, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.

"Okay, so we'll stop by my dad's office long enough to establish a presence and maybe see if there's any information to be found and then we'll sneak down to the Department of Mysteries and search around for either the kids themselves or any clues as to where they might be. But just keep in mind, Rox, the odds of us finding Aniya right away are rather slim, though we'll obviously try to stay optimistic about it all." Albus looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, watching the way she looked around the Atrium so seriously.

She nodded in response and they stepped onto the elevator.

Albus jabbed his wand at the button and the cool female voice returned, announcing that they were headed to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Thankfully, no one else was currently inside with them, so Albus was able to continue talking to Roxy as they moved from one floor to the next.

"Okay, so what we do know for certain is that over the past thirty years they have taken roughly, what seventy or so children? We know it started not long after the war ended, with amongst the first children to be, uh, "chosen" being, more often than not, the kids of those running Project Starkid. You know, it's as though… the people in charge of the project were all picked for their children or perhaps they themselves have the same strange abilities and either passed them along or trained their kids to do the same things as them."

Roxy remembered the way Trinh Itawa had stopped everyone on the street—including Roxy herself—and forced them to do as she commanded. It was likely that the man who had picked Aniya up was just as much under her power as anyone else. That had been more than any Imperius Curse was capable of, to be able to control so many people at once. Roxy had never seen anything like that happen in her life. It simply wasn't natural.

"Do you think they'd really want Aniya and her sisters because they were Legilimens? Couldn't anyone, in theory, train themselves to do the exact same thing? Why are they so special that the three of them have been taken to be tested on?"

"Department of Magical Law Enforcement," said the elevator and the doors opened to the sound of a jovially tinkling bell.

Before Albus stepped off the elevator, he frowned thoughtfully at Roxy, looking mildly worried. "Roxy, it's possible there's more to Aniya than we previously thought. There's' no telling _why_ they took her and her sisters—except that it probably means they can do things that make them dangerous to you or I."

* * *

The Aurors office was rather busy, with people bustling around constantly. A board of the entirety of the United Kingdom hung on the wall with pins stuck in various places, blinking a spectrum of reds and oranges to mark the levels of dark magic that were currently being observed. Aurors were reviewing cases, going through possible leads, and conducting interviews with witnesses. No one seemed to have noticed the two newest occupants of the department's main floor.

"If it were my brother here, people would have noticed immediately and flocked to talk to him," said Albus, though he didn't sound bitter about it so much as merely accepting of a fact that he'd long ago decided could not be changed.

He shrugged and directed Roxy to follow after him to the receptionist's desk, waving cheerfully at the secretary when the man didn't immediately look up.

"Hi, I wanted to see if Harry Potter is here if you don't mind, " Albus told him politely; the receptionist didn't look up, too busy going through the papers on his desk to notice someone was speaking. "Uh, hi? Hello? I'm here to see Harry Potter—you know, the Head Auror? Can you—can you please listen to me? Hello?"

"Hey!" Roxy said loudly, hitting her hand on the table, which made the man jump and look up at her crossly. "We want to see Harry Potter so pay attention to us and tell us whether he's in his office or not! Don't they _pay_ you to do something useful?"

"Sorry," the receptionist said, looking from Roxy to Albus. His eyes widened as he realised that it was Albus _Potter_ standing in front of him, as the resemblance to his father was uncanny. "Oh, Mr Potter, my sincerest apologies, let me go get your father right away, sir." he got to his feet and hurried off towards the Head's office with a frantic look his face.

Roxy turned to look at her cousin with a pleased expression on her face. "See? Sometimes you just have to be forceful to get what you want."

He rolled his eyes before noticing that the Head's office had opened. Albus' expression brightened at the sight of his father walking over; the older Potter waved happily to his son and niece, though he seemed a bit perplexed by their presence.

"Couldn't we ask your dad about Project Starkid?" Roxy asked quietly of Albus. "I mean, even if he doesn't know anything about it, wouldn't telling hi to make sense so that he's at least aware that something so terrible is happening in the same building as him?"

Albus shrugged. "I suppose it couldn't hurt," he said just as Uncle Harry came up to them. The two Potters hugged briefly. "HI Dad. How's work going? Roxy and I just wanted to say hello."

"Hello, Albus, hello Roxy," Uncle Harry told them warmly, directing the two towards his office. "You know, I haven't seen any of you kids around the office in quite a long time, though you all used to come by rather frequently on weekends when I wasn't off doing missions. It's nice of you two to come see me again."

They sat down across from Uncle Harry, who took a moment to shift things around on his desk and finished clearing the area off before looking at them with a small smile, waving his hand to indicate that they could speak.

"So Roxy and I, er, we just wanted to stop by and, you know, see how you were doing and how work was going because, uh, I…" He looked over to Roxy with a frantic glance, not sure how to move forward without making a mess of things.

She sighed and gave her uncle the brightest smile she could manage. If he wasn't going to use some of his Gryffindor bravery, then Roxy was going to have some fun with the situation. "What Albus is trying to say is that he's started a new book about Aurors and dark magic but he was a bit worried to ask you for help since you're always so busy and he's not, as you're aware, the best at conducting conversations in a formal situation, which is why he brought me along to write everything down and generally help. Oh," she continued coyly, smirking at Albus, "and he also wanted to talk to maybe half a dozen of your officers of varying degrees of experience to find out their opinions of the job and working under you."

"Ah," replied Uncle Harry, running his hands through his hair. "Well, I don't see why that couldn't be arranged. And after Skeeter's book following my promotion, I think we here in the Auror's department could benefit from some more _positive_ literature written about us."

Albus made a face at Roxy, but she only replied by silently giving him a sugary sweet smile, enjoying the discomfort on his face. It was funny, watching him squirm—but Roxy had to focus, had to keep on track so they could rescue Aniya.

Uncle Harry cleared his throat, turning his head ever so slightly to look out of the fake window that led to a false view of an empty field of grass, devoid of any signs of human life. He seemed to get lost looking outside for a few moments before coming back to his senses and focused his attention back on his son and niece.

"Were there any questions about my job that you wanted to ask me right now?" he asked, sounding tired, like the forty-nine years of his life were putting sudden weight into his seemingly innocuous question.

 _Aniya_ , Roxy thought to herself, frowning. _We need to ask about Project Starkid, we need to talk to Uncle Harry, we need to warn him about what's going on before anything worse happens._ Yet she said nothing as another, darker thought came to mind, telling her _don't tell him, not yet, it isn't right, don't tell Uncle Harry, put it off if only for a few minutes, don't tell him yet._

Albus apparently did not seem to feel the same way as he leant forward, growing suddenly serious as he let out a heavy sigh. "Dad, listen, we actually came here for something just a bit more than writing a book or conducting a few interviews." He looked down at his hands before continuing, swallowing nervously. "You see, we have a friend by the name of Aniya Lamb—"

"As in Russell Lamb, who was arrested in 1998 up until 2006 for being a Death Eater? And the same Russell Lamb who was arrested a few years back for attempting to turn his own daughters into weapons? Would your friend Aniya happen to be one of these same daughters?"

"Er, yeah," Albus said, nodded, his head bobbing up and down. "She was kidnapped earlier today by a woman that we suspect is named Trinh Itawa, the daughter of Phuong Itawa. We—that is, Roxy and I—have a very good reason to believe that Aniya has powers beyond what most normal witches and wizards can do and this is the reason for why she was taken."

"Hm." Uncle Harry ran his hands through his hair again and looked over to Roxy. "We did get an owl concerning strange things happening in Diagon Alley, though no one mentioned a missing girl—merely that a bit of building had been blown up and signs showing that there had been pretty powerful Imperius Curses, or something close enough to that, placed on everyone in the nearby area."

Roxy nodded eagerly. "Yes, that was Trinh, although I don't think what she was doing was the Imperius Curse, but rather something far more powerful and dangerous—a skill she's picked up or possibly always had, but definitely something she's only been able to hone through a group called Project Starkid."

Uncle Harry frowned, putting his head in his hands for a moment before sitting back up. "Thank you for telling me this, both of you. I really appreciate it. But I think it might be time for you to head home."

"What?" Albus gaped at his father, blinking in confusion. "Dad, why? Isn't this important? Shouldn't you start figuring out how to fix all of this, like you always do anytime that something goes wrong? This is your _job_ , to stop dark magic! You can't just tell us to leave like that!"

The older Potter shook his head. "Albus, I really do think you and Roxy should go home now, please. I'm sure Scorpius will be worried if you don't return soon."

Albus looked over to Roxy, sharing a confused look with her. "Dad, what's going on? What aren't you telling us?"

Harry frowned, looking uncomfortable before clearing his throat and giving them a nervous chuckle. "Ah...yes. I was hoping this wouldn't come up, but I suppose it's time now since you persist so much. You see, there's something you two should know, which is that I already know all about Project Starkid."


	53. Mr Potter's secret: Part 2

" _There's something you two should know,_ _which is that_ I already know all about Project Starkid."

* * *

What?" Albus said, gasping at his father's words in complete shock and bewilderment. "You already knew about all of the terrible things that Project Starkid has done? Why haven't you tried to stop them, then?"

Uncle Harry got a strange look on his face and got to his feet, walking over to one of his filing cabinets. He pulled the top drawer open, rifling through it for a moment before pulling out a thick packet and handed it over to Albus and Roxy.

They opened it up to find photographs and entire pages written full of information about all the known members of Project Starkid, along with every single known victim that they had taken over the last thirty years. Over the faces of the ones that had died, someone stamped a large red 'X', so dark and morbid that Roxy had to look away, not wanting to look at the faces of kids who had died because no one moved fast enough to save them.

"How long have you been keeping files on everything, Uncle Harry?" Roxy asked quietly, glancing up at him. "And why've you only been keeping files instead of doing anything to stop it?"

"I've been trying," Uncle Harry confessed, dropping back into his office chair and stared down at his desk. "I've had agents keeping track of what Project Starkid has done nearly since it began. But no matter what evil things they do or how many time we try to bring the situation in front of the Wizengamot, Starkid continues chugging forward year after year. I've done everything I can think of to stop them, but whatever it is that Starkid is working on specifically, our own Ministry apparently wants to keep it going for as long as possible."

Roxy couldn't understand why the Ministry would let such an awful program exist in the first place, not to mention allowing its continuation for so many years and to take so many yeas.

"Do you know where they keep the children that get taken? Even if we can't shut down the program, couldn't we at least do that much, to get Aniya to safety and to rescue as many of the others as we possibly can? We owe them that much, don't you think, Uncle Harry?"

Albus nodded, leaning forward and placing his hands on the desk. "Dad, we _have_ to do something—this isn't fair to all the people they've stolen away and the families they've ruined over the last three decades."

The elder Potter male let out a deep sigh, gaze falling onto the file resting just out of his son's reach. His eyes seemed sad as he slowly moved one of the photos towards himself. He held it up, showing them a picture of a small boy of nine or ten years of age with dark brown hair and blue eyes that held the observer captivated.

"This was Brett Ancrum. He was the youngest child of Scott Ancrum and Viola Richmond. Brett was three years old when he was kidnapped from his home one late night. His parents implored me to look for their son and I spent another four years doing all that I could to find him. By the time I actually did locate him, he was not the boy his parents had lost. Brett was under the control of people like Phuong Itawa and Rafael McClane; he used the powers they'd help him uncover to kill all four of the Aurors I'd brought along with me and landed me in St Mungo's for two weeks. I tried to bring this discovery before the Wizengamot, but they rejected every proposal I gave them. I had Kingsley on my side but before I could ask him to help me, Brett Ancrum's dead body was found on his parents' doorstep. He was only ten years old."

Roxy looked at the picture once more, imagining the kind of boy that Brett Ancrum have become if he hadn't been corrupted by the likes of Itawa and McClane.

"So what are you trying to say, Uncle Harry?" she asked quietly, keeping her gaze on the photo on his desk. "That we shouldn't save those people because it won't do anything to help?"

Harry shook his head and smiled gently at her, a firmness to his jaw. "No, Roxy, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. It's because of people like Brett Ancrum, who had their entire lives stolen away from, that I am going to take the two of you along with a team of Aurors to the headquarters of Project Starkid later this week and we're going to rescue your friend along with every other kid they've hurt over the years."

Roxy couldn't help but smile; they were going to do something, finally. _She_ was going to make a difference in the world.

* * *

Ginny Potter didn't agree with the idea of her husband "setting out" on a mission—which is what he'd told her he was doing since the whole thing was meant to be a secret—especially since the whole thing would be occurring on the same day as his forty-ninth birthday, but Harry assured her this wasn't even that much of an important birthday in the grand scheme of things, especially considering he'd missed his first ten birthdays as well.

Harry had picked his small team of Aurors personally, choosing people that he felt could be trusted implicitly. According to him, a lot of the older members had stopped caring about their jobs long ago and began focusing more on the pay checks they received, which was why he had bypassed people who might have more experience and years under their belt but certainly wouldn't have put everything they had into this unofficial mission.

First was Harry's godson and a favourite of all the Weasley cousins—Teddy Lupin. There was also Isaac Baumann, Vikram Jhingade, Hannah Jankowski, and Aubree Wu; all five were amongst Harry Potter's most well-respected and highly dedicated Aurors, the team he trusted the most to keep what they were doing under wraps and stay dedicated to their job.

The ones being brought along who weren't Aurors were Albus, Roxy, and Jo, who had insisted on coming, claiming that Aniya was just as much her friend as Roxy's, even if the two girls didn't really get along very well.

"Alright, everybody," Uncle Harry said, looking around at them all.

They were gathered in one of the briefing rooms with the Project Starkid file sitting in the middle of the table where Aubree had thrown it in disgust after she finished reading it, glaring down at the stack of papers like it had personally offended her.

"So as we now are all aware, Project Starkid has been going on since September of 1998. There have been somewhere between seventy eighty children that we know of, amongst which nearly half of them had died at the hands of those who have been working on turning them into human weapons. Today, it is our mission to go to the headquarters of Project Starkid and rescue their unfortunate victims. Does anyone have any further questions?"

"Yeah," said Hannah, raising her hand. "So is this an 'unofficial' mission because the Ministry and the Wizengamot don't approve of what we're going to do—and if so, why don't they?"

Harry looked grimly in her direction. "I believe that the Wizengamot were the ones to sign off on this project in the first place. Phuong Itawa, even beyond her Legilimency and Occlumency skills, can be quite persuasive. Her lineage is long and fairly pure of blood and it would not be the first time that Galleons were exchanged to get a favourable vote in court. It is likely she posed it as a means of 'protection' against future Dark Lords, using a mockery of my own actions to argue that children were the best means of accomplishing her goals."

"And if we _do_ rescue these children?" asked Hannah. "What's going to happen to them? Some actually _are_ still children with no memories of their real families but even more of the names on these lists are Hogwarts-aged or are adults. Where will they go after a life of knowing nothing other than Starkid?"

The senior Auror hummed thoughtfully, his lips twitching slightly as he considered her question. "We will work on reuniting who we can—that's stage two. Anyone else, we'll put through a form of rehabilitation to help them become adjusted to the real world and help them become acclimated to how to use their magic in a way that is positive and appropriate."

Hannah leant back in her chair and made a small humming noise, but said nothing more; the other Aurors were also silent, watching their Head of Office pick the file up from the middle of the table, shrinking it down before he stuck the whole thing in his robes' pocket.

Roxy, her back against the wall, looked over to where Albus was sitting. The younger Potter had dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand and there was an anxious fluttering pattern to the movement of his eyes. She did not need Aniya to look through Al's head and determine that he was feeling nervous about going with his father on a real, albeit unofficial, Auror mission.

She flashed her cousin a reassuring smile, which he responded to with a shaking thumbs up and then buried his head in his hands.

"Alright," Uncle Harry told them loudly, waving his wand so that little images of the various people in the room appeared on the table. "Teddy, I want you to come with me as surveillance—we'll be stationed here and here—" The little figures moved around a rotating map of the Department of Mysteries, though it was not an area that Roxy recognised from the last time she broke in "—while Vikram, Aubree, and Hannah will be decoys here, here, and here, as well as herding anyone they find to the main room." He punctuated each here by jabbing the little figures across the table. "Isaac, you will take Albus, Roxy, and Joanne and go here, where the sleeping quarters are. If it's safe, I will send Teddy to meet up with you and all five will work to sneak as many people out as possible. If they resist, small Stunning and Silencing Charms will be sufficient; however, if they start to make noise then move on. And please remember to have your wand on you at all times. Is everyone clear on what to do?"

"Yes, sir!" said the Aurors in unison; the other three mumbled in agreement and got to their feet, following after Harry and the other adults.

When they had left the Aurors' office, Uncle Harry turned to look at them all, quietly telling the group, "Project Starkid goes on in the bowels of the DoM in rooms built so far underground that they don't show up on any official maps of the Ministry—mostly because the people who drew up the maps didn't know these rooms existed in the first place. The only reason why I have a model of the place is because of a confidante that was placed into the area who has dutifully worked with me over the past fifteen years to take Starkid down."

He led them to an elevator, where the nine of them squeezed between the passengers who were already there. Everyone fell quiet, not wanting to accidentally give away what they were doing or where they were going in case anyone else in the elevator worked for Starkid's benefit.

Roxy felt her heart thudding wildly as the elevator doors opened on the entrance to the Department of Mysteries; the last time she had come to this area of the Ministry, Roxy has become possessed by a prophecy and made the discovery that her cousin was potentially a Seer.

What would happen this time?

Uncle Harry led the group towards the doors of the DoM, knocking briefly before he turned back to look at them. "I have a friend inside who has agreed to lead us as far as she can go. After that, we'll have to move on our own. If you are spotted and someone asks why you're here, simply tell them you're part of the monthly Auror inspection. That, or a Stunning spell if they start asking too many questions."

They nodded; Roxy suddenly understood why Uncle Harry had told her to dress like a junior Auror. Now she, Albus, and Jo would blend in with the others.

Just then, a medium-height auburn haired woman, roughly the same age as Harry, opened the door and smiled at them. "Hello, Harry," she said sweetly, kissing his cheek. "Please, hurry inside, all of you, before anyone catches on that I'm gone."

"This is Lisa Macmillan," Harry explained as the woman led them into the atrium and put her hand on one of the doors, muttering a quiet spell right before the room began to spin around.

Once it had stopped, the glow from the candles illuminated the correct door and they followed after Mrs Macmillan into a narrow, poorly-lit hallway of which Roxy could see no end. The woman moved quickly, urging them to keep their voices lowered and to not look behind them for any reason whilst they were walking.

"All the rooms are cleverly designed," she explained to them, "but this one in particularly is quite tricky. It will try to force you into turning around but no matter what happens, you have to keep your eyes on what's in front of you or else you'll fall victim to the room."

"This is a room?" asked Hannah. "It looks more like a hallway that leads to nowhere. Are you sure you know where we're going?"

 _She asks a lot of questions_ , Roxy noticed, but shook it off. That was probably why Uncle Harry had invited her along—because she noticed things no one else did and wasn't afraid to speak her mind when things were questionable.

Mrs Macmillan nodded, still moving quickly, as though slowing down in any way would bring unbearable suffering upon them all. "Do you hear the noises yet? Can you hear them calling out to you, begging you to turn around and face them? If so, ignore them as best you can, no matter who it may sound like. Those voices are no friend of ours."

As though the room had heard her words, it suddenly seemed that Roxy could hear her brother's voice begging her to turn around, to run back to him, where they could both be safe and sound together for the rest of eternity, if only Roxy would look behind her and acknowledge him.

But, instead, she kept her gaze firmly forward, still angry from her discovery a few weeks ago about her brother. Roxy would not fall prey to any dumb tricks here in this hell hole known as the Department of Mysteries. She would not be trapped this time—not like with that stupid prophecy and the hallucinations.

The group kept moving forward even though it felt like there was no possible end in sight.

Roxy could see Hannah sweating nervously, clearly wanting to look behind her, but just as it seemed like she was about to, Vikram reached out and took her hand, guiding her further down the hallway to safety.

Finally, after they had walked for several minutes and Roxy was beginning to seriously question whether this was a trap, there was a light that glowed brighter than all of the other torches on the wall. It was the outline of a door, slightly cracked so that the begging voices were drowned out by a soft humming noise.

"This is as far as I go," Mrs Macmillan sad, opening the door wide enough to let them in. "Harry, you'll need to set someone on this door to make sure no one comes down this way while you're here. And I told you where to go when you're getting everyone back out, didn't I?"

Harry nodded. "I'll keep myself here—Teddy, you can stand on the other end of the walkway, where it splits into Project Starkid."

"How's _she_ gonna get back?" Hannah asked, jerking her head in Mrs Macmillan's direction. "If you aren't supposed to go back and face the hallway, then how in the name of Merlin are _any_ of us going to get out of here?"

Mrs Macmillan smiled and tapped her wand on the dark stones next to her, mumbling under her breath. A second door, this one identical to the one they'd initially seen in the atrium, appeared, pushing away at the stone so that it sat there, just waiting to be opened.

" _This_ is how I will return and how you will get back to the outside world once you've rescued everyone. Harry knows what to do, so simply don't get lost and everything will be fine." With that, she opened the other door and disappeared inside, leaving them all alone to blink in confusion and wonder what was supposed to happen next.

Harry shut the door that they had come through and turned to look at Teddy. "Lead them out of this part of the room. You'll hit a hallway that ends in left and right options. Teddy, you will stay there and wait while Aubree, Vikram, and Hannah will go to the left door and Isaac, Albus, Roxy, and Jo will go to the right one. On the left is where the staff and testing area of Project Starkid is—it's your job to grab as much information as you possibly can and Stun anyone in your way. They'll think that's why we came here because the right way is difficult to navigate and the kids will be hard to find. When you four do, though," Harry turned to look at his son, employee, and the two girls, "then you will bring as many of those kids back with you as possible without resorting to violence. Again, a simple Stunning spell is all that's needed for anyone who becomes a problem—don't bother with them they're too far gone for us to save right now. Does everyone understand what to do?"

They all nodded; Harry directed for them to go further on and the group complied, though no one felt exactly comfortable leaving the Head Auror behind. It didn't feel right to walk away from someone so powerful but whenever one of them looked back, Harry waved his hand for them to keep going.

When they reached the fork in the hallway, the three Aurors went to the left and disappeared from sight; Teddy leant against the wall and pulled out his wand, looking around attentively. He waved his hand at Isaac, encouraging them to move forward.

"Follow me," Isaac said to Albus, Roxy, and Jo. "Keep your wands drawn at all times. If you feel threatened, don't hesitate but don't use any dangerous attacks—Silencio, Expelliarmus, Stupefy—those are all the sorts of things you want to stick to, nothing more. For the most part, though, I want the three of you to stay behind me and follow any orders I give you. I don't like having civilians with me, especially since two of them are related to Mr Potter, but if he tells me to bring you along, then that's what I'll do on the grounds that I respect Mr Potter whole-heartedly, and _not_ because I have my faith in your ability to protect yourselves."

"We'll keep that in mind," Roxy replied coldly, looking sternly at Isaac. Sure, she could understand why he might be reluctant about bringing along 'civilians', as he called them, but he didn't have to be an arse about it. "I suppose this means we can't really trust you to defend us, then?"

Isaac didn't respond, instead choosing to push the door open and wave them on. The door slammed shut behind the group, plunging the group into darkness.

"Oh," Albus said; he muttered a quick, " _Lumos_ ," and a small light shined against his face, illuminating the worried panic of his features. "Where do they keep the children, Isaac? Surely not _here_ , in the dark? Not in some dark hole with no light at all—not here? That's inhumane."

"This is all inhumane," Isaac said shortly, lighting his own wand. "But no, we still have one more door to get through before we actually get to the living quarters." He turned to look at them all. "Stick close to me and keep your wands lit. There's no telling what's in here and I'd prefer to not be caught unaware."

They moved forward slowly, hesitant, and freezing any time there was a noise, convinced that each shadow was an enemy coming to steal them away or else some unknown attacker that would fire curses and take the group down while remaining unseen and therefore unhurt.

Isaac pushed Albus to the front, telling him to use his 'Potter genes' to be brave and stand up in defence. Isaac himself stayed in the back, wand held up and moving slowly back and forth, sweeping his beam of light around the room to make sure that no one else was about to sneak up on them.

When they reached the second door, Isaac raised his hand, indicating for the other three to fall motionless. He lifted up his wand, running it across the dark wood, muttering to himself as he checked to make sure that there were no curses or traps placed on the door that might prevent entry into the next room. He must have found it acceptable, though, because Isaac leant away from the door and looked towards them.

"Remember to follow after me and stay behind me, you got it?" he warned then took his wand and whispered, " _Alohomora_ ," smiling when it clicked and opened wide.

The group moved through the door, wands held aloft, prepared for anything that might come leaping out at the four of them.

There were rows upon rows of beds, a bit like a hospital ward, each one neatly folded with a fluffed white pillar resting on top of crisp blue sheets. A line of cribs was pushed against the wall furthest away from where they were standing. There were small dressers by each bed, with a few personal items such as a book or a small toy. On the walls were posters and photographs of people that Roxy didn't recognise, though she suspected they were probably not anyone from the old lives of those who lived under Project Starkid.

There was also a girl, who was a few years younger than Roxy; she stood in the middle of the room, wearing grey, shapeless clothing that entirely hid her gender. Except for her shoulder-length blonde hair and slightly feminine lip shape, the girl could have just as easily passed for a male.

She blinked at them in shock, looking from person to person like she'd never seen anyone that looked like them in her whole life. Her eyes grew wide at the sigh of Isaac's wand, but she made no noise as she gaped at them.

"Er, hello," said Isaac, waving at her with the hand that wasn't holding his wand. "My name is Isaac Baumann and I am with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as an Auror. I have come here with these three to rescue you, along with everyone else in this project. Does any of this make sense to you? Feel free to nod or shake your head in response."

The girl only continued to stare at them in bewilderment, tilting her head and furrowing her brow, obviously trying to make sense of what Isaac had just told her.

"Can you speak? Do you know English?" Isaac asked her, reaching out to touch her; the girl pulled away, looking frightened by his movements.

Roxy, watching the girl carefully, slowly dropped to her knees in front of the girl, letting her wand fall from her fingers and roll across the floor as she looked up at the girl. "My name is Roxy," she told the girl softly. "We want to help you, yeah? We're here to be your friends because you're no longer safe here and we want you to be safe."

"I'm fifteen, not five!" the girl snapped suddenly, looking cross. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm an idiot, you know. I don't need to be coddled like all the adults treat me."

"Oh." Roxy stood back up, sticking her hand out, which the girl grasped and shook firmly. "So do you have a name, then?"

The girl nodded, puffing out her chest. "I'm Chloe. I'm part of Team Delta and I've been living here with the majority of Team Delta since I was four years old. And I don't want to go anywhere, even if it is supposedly safer. This is my home, my family. You can't just take me away. No one here will agree to something like that."

It was Isaac's turn to gape at the girl, unable to comprehend that someone wouldn't want to get out of this place as soon as possible. "But don't you want to see your family again? Don't you want to return to a normal life? You're a victim here, held against your will! Why would you want to stay here when there's so much outside of these walls?"

Chloe shook her head. "But this _is_ my home," the girl replied, just as confused as the rest of them, though for entirely different reasons. "This _is_ my family. Why would I want to leave?"

"Aren't they running tests on you guys all the time?" asked Albus, lowering his own wand. "Haven't you ever noticed kids who were here one day and gone the next—their disappearance never acknowledged? Believe us when we say that, as much as this may feel like home, Project Starkid doesn't care about you. They don't love you. You're just a weapon to them to be manipulated and used for their own diabolical means."

She frowned and turned to Roxy, the only person that Chloe felt was actually interested in her well-being. "This is the only home I know," Chloe told the older girl, not sure why she was confiding in this stranger. "I don't want to leave my family or my home."

Roxy tried to give her an encouraging smile as she moved forward, placing her hand on Chloe's shoulder and speaking softly. She could understand why it might seem scary to be ripped away from everything the girl ever knew, but Chloe and the others weren't safe staying here. They needed to leave, to go somewhere they could be properly loved and cared for.

"You've had friends, right, who trained along with you but were never quite good enough or fast enough or smart enough to keep up with everyone else until one day you woke to find their bed empty and that no one would acknowledge that they were ever there in the first place?"

Chloe nodded, eyes growing wide.

"We've come here to make sure that sort of thing never happens again. We want to take you guys away somewhere else to live normal lives like any other witch or wizard. I know this is your home and you don't remember anything else, but we're only here to help you, okay?"

She reached out to take Chloe's hand, giving the girl a smile that Roxy sincerely hoped conveyed the honesty and hope she had of improving their lives. Chloe held her hand up, fingers brushing Roxy's softly—

And then the doors exploded, sending them all flying backwards.


	54. Project Starkid

They stared in horror at the destroyed remains of the doorway, where Trinh Itawa stood, a cluster of children, teenagers, and young adults clustered behind her, each scowling in the direction of Isaac and the others.

Chloe squealed and ducked behind Roxy, clutching the older girl's hand with a frightened expression on her face, near to tears.

"Ah, Roxanne is here again!" cried Trinh, clapping her hands together. "It's so nice to see you once more, Roxanne, and so soon after our last meeting, too!"

She led the rest of the project victims into the room, holding up her hands to keep them quiet. They practically marched inside, stopping in one fluid motion, perfectly trained soldiers ready for an order to attack. Even the very young kids held their heads high and puffed their chests out proudly, fierce looks on their youthful faces.

Isaac tilted his head, looking at Trinh and her young army. "You are Trinh Itawa?" he asked calmly, sounding almost bored. "You are the daughter of Phuong Itawa, the head of Project Starkid?"

She smiled and nodded wordlessly, turning to a boy not much older than a first year might be, indicating for him to step forward. He moved to stand by her side, dark brown hair falling to cover his eyes, making him appear even more youthful and childish.

Then, still with an overly calm expression, Trinh looked to Chloe, who ducked her head and whimpered. "Chloe, what are you doing?" Trinh asked in a mocking voice. "Why are you hiding from your family, from your sisters and brothers like this?" She held out her hand. "Come stand with the people who _love_ you, who _care_ for you. The people that you're standing with right now are the enemy who've come to destroy everything we know."

Chloe raised fearful eyes to Roxy, who shook her head and moved her body in front of the fifteen year old. She would not let Trinh take anyone else nor tear any more families apart for her own deranged plans.

Trinh frowned, glaring at Roxy when she noticed how tightly the girls were holding onto each other. She tapped the boy at her side on the arm, whispering something into his ear.

"Chloe, come over here _now_ or I will be very upset. You don't want to make your big sister upset, do you? Bad things happen to people who displease me. I don't understand what's gotten into you all of the sudden. These people are strangers, you can't trust them."

"You're a liar!" the girl cried back, red in the face. She turned to the rest of Project Starkid, calling out to them, "Trinh and the adults have been lying to us for years! They don't have any of our best interests in mind, we're just tools for them to use and throw away when we don't work any more. We've all lost friends, haven't we?" Chloe looked briefly at Roy, who nodded encouragingly. "Who here hasn't gone to sleep at night with their friend a few beds over only to wake the next morning and find them gone?"

Many of the younger kids whispered to each other, a low hum of voices filling the room. Those who were loyal to the project tried to hush those around them, but there was three people muttering nervously for every one that was not.

Trinh went scarlet, clenching her fists as she scowled around the room. "Ignore Chloe!" she yelled. "Ignore her, she's been brainwashes, she's been tricked. Chloe Coxley is no longer our sister, she is in the hands of our enemies. Do not listen to her any longer, her words are not to be trusted, do you all hear me?"

"You're weapons to them!" Roxy screamed back; behind her, Jo also began crying out at the children. "They only took you away from your real lives and your families because you have special powers. No one here cares about you—think about how they torture you and force you to do things you don't want to do. Trinh took one of my best friends, she doesn't have any intention of ever doing anything but using you in a war against the rest of the world. She couldn't care less about any of you!"

"Lies! Lies, lies, they're all lies!" shrieked Trinh, eyes going wide; the air crackled around them. "Don't listen to them, don't believe them! They're outsides, how could they possibly understand the family when they aren't a part of the family? Only people who understand us, who live with us could possibly recognise the importance—"

"Where's Aniya?" Roxy demanded of the older woman, shouting over Trinh's words to be heard. "Where is my friend? Where are the people—the children—you've hidden away, never to be seen again? How many coffins are there, how many graves have you dug?"

Albus tugged at her sleeve, muttering into her ear, "Dad said we were supposed to stay hidden, that we weren't supposed to confront people. This is kind of the opposite of that."

"Trinh knew we were here anyway so we might as well take her down. We aren't going to get out of here without a fight anyway so why don't we fight, Albus? Why don't we win something for once and rescue everyone? Be a Gryffindor, why don't you?"

He frowned, but said nothing.

The other children of Project Starkid kept muttering to each other in low tones, not sure who to believe or listen to. But, slowly, one by one, kids were moving away from Trinh and the others, ignoring her screams for them to come back and 'ignore the lies'. They walked across the room to stand with Roxy, Chloe, and the others.

Trinh turned purple with rage. "You are abandoning your family! Don't you see what you're giving up just to please the common people? Please, come back to your sisters and brothers. Don't tear this family apart!"

"Where is Aniya?" Roxy replied simply and then was forced to duck as, behind Trinh and her shrunken army, came Uncle Harry, Teddy, and the other Aurors, Stunning everyone in their immediate sights, sending them sprawling over each other in unconscious piles.

Those who were not immediately hit turned and began firing back. They did not use wands but instead screamed, raising their hands and causing beds to fly across the room, fires to sprout up on the floor, and for the whole room to shake as though caught in an earthquake.

Trinh shrieked inhumanly, her hair flapping around in her face as she stood in her own personal wind storm as she and the boy with her spun around, fighting back to back. She howled, watching without care as a five year old girl dropped from one of the explosions that she made.

Chloe ran out to grab the girl and Trinh smirked, sending a bolt of fire at the fifteen year old. Before Roxy could shout out a warning, though, an opaque bubble appeared around Chloe and the little girl, causing the fire to bounce harmlessly off and alight on a pillowcase that had been thrown against the wall.

Roxy fired spells at Trinh and the boy, hoping to catch one of them, but they seemed to be shielded as well because nothing that Roxy threw at them landed; they simply kept fighting even as their allies dwindled down to nothing.

Many of the kids who had abandoned Trinh for Roxy were using _their_ powers against those who had been their friends only half an hour ago, but much of their group was filled by younger, less experienced children, and their powers were not quite able to keep up with everyone else, leaving them exhausted and frightened.

A girl was jumping around the room—or, not jumping so much as appearing in one place and then another, faster than Apparition and with control far beyond what any child under ten years old should ever have. She grabbed at Trinh's people's hair, their clothes, shouting at them, distracting people as they were about to fight. The girl giggled, finding mirth in the annoyed and angry responses that she received. She moved too fast for anyone to catch her and she kept leaping from place to place until—

Trinh's boy suddenly whirled around and as the girl appeared once more, he fired in her direction. She screamed in pain, collapsing to the floor; her skin bubbled and hissed, hair burning away, her dress melting into the flesh on her arms. The girl screamed over and over, her voice cutting across all other noise for what felt like entire minutes until her cries began to fall in volume, becoming quieter. Then, eerily, suddenly, she was silent. Motionless.

"You killed her!" screamed Chloe. "You killed her, August killed Nell! Trinh doesn't love us, none of them do. They'll kill us all if we don't fight back!"

Roxy added her own voice into the cacophony once more, keeping up the demanding yell of, "Where is Aniya? Where is Aniya? Where are the coffins, the graves? Where is Aniya? What did you do with the children?"

Explosions bit into the walls around them, sending debris collapsing and cracks to appear in the floor. People were falling, slipping into the broken ground.

Uncle Harry ran up, yelling for Roxy to lead everyone out of the room room before it collapsed entirely. She waved her wand in the air and called for those who were still able to follow after her, pushing past those that remained of Trinh's army. Chloe ran to Roxy's side, taking her hand once more, the girl that had been attacked earlier on her other side. They were covered by dozens of shields that merged and formed into one large wall that kept them safe from harm.

They pushed out the door, running through the dark room and into the hallway where Roy encouraged the kids to run, looking to Albus to lead them all out of the DoM and back to safety. He nodded, scooping up the little five year old girl when Chloe refused to let go of Roxy's hand.

"You have to go with everyone else," Roxy tried to tell Chloe, but she shook her head and kept her free hand up in the air to hold her strange shield around them while Roxy cast spells at anyone who dared to come near them. Despite only knowing Roxy for less than an hour, Chloe knew that this older girl was the only person she could trust entirely, even if she couldn't explain why.

The two girls ran back into the collapsing room, pushing any struggling kids they found towards the door to safety.

Uncle Harry was on the ground, staring up at Trinh, who smirked at him; they, too, were shielded, but this was to prevent any of the Aurors from keeping their Head from being endangered. She lifted her hand, pointing her palm at Harry's face but before Trinh could do anything, Harry jumped up and tackled her, causing his wand to fall away and roll on the floor.

Chloe rushed forward, dragging Roxy after her. "You can't let Trinh get back up or else we're all doomed," she said in a panicked voice, waving her own wards away as she tore through Trinh's. "She'll kill that older man and then each of us unless we can stop her right now."

Trinh and Harry grappled for his wand for several seconds while her army of youths prevented the Aurors, Chloe, and Roxy from moving forward.

She kicked the wand away just as Harry was about to grab it then pushed the Head Auror away from her, preventing him from getting up with a wave of her hand, pressing Harry to the floor and holding him still with a flick of her wrist. Trinh looked around the room, smirking, and sent many of her enemies flying to the walls, pinned against the brick using the power of her mind. She laughed and stalked forward slowly, focusing her attention on Harry once more.

"And now that I've dealt with all your little underlings, it's time to cut the head off of this dumb, pathetic snake. The Boy-Who-Lived shall now become the Old-Man-Who-Died. And what a pitiable way to go."

Hands pointed at Harry's face, Trinh opened her mouth to say something, fireballs forming in her palms. Before she could do anything, though, Isaac screamed, jumping in the way and pushing Harry out of the way, taking the full force of Trinh's fire.

He screamed again, skin bubbling and melting, his face and hands blistering. Isaac fell to the ground, trying to rid himself of the fire but it moved like worms, crawling deep inside of him, searing his skin and cooking him both inside and out. Isaac's howls were painful to listen to, a wounded animal but no one could do anything to help him because the air around him was boiling hot and his clothes had burnt to his flesh and to the floor around him.

Trinh growled, turning her hands towards where Harry was gaping in shock at Isaac's burning body. Chloe reached out, creating a transparent ward around the older man before Trinh could touch him. Flames licked the air around his face but could do nothing actually harm Harry.

" _Stupefy_!" Teddy, Roxy, and Vikram all yelled simultaneously, knocking Trinh to the floor. She collapsed and the flames circling Harry's face disappeared.

Isaac's body was also freed of its fiery prison, now reduced to merely smoking, but he was already dead, an empty husk that didn't even look like Isaac any more. He didn't look like a _person,_ either, everything burnt away so as to be entirely unrecognisable.

" _Silencio_ ," Teddy ordered Trinh, jabbing his wand at her to silence the woman's panicked yelling. He scowled at her, eyes burning a hole into her head with how furious he was. "You're the most disgusting person I've ever met. Using and murdering children for twisted causes—I don't care how much power and authority your people think they have, the Ministry cannot overlook crimes of this nature and of this quantity."

Trinh, unable to say anything, glared in response, her face twitching and turning red.

Behind them, Harry and Vikram were Stunning any survivors from Trinh's army, though many of them fell to their knees and begged for mercy, claiming that Trinh was controlling them or that they hadn't known any better. Those who continued to resist were swiftly knocked down and dealt with before they could try to do anything.

Sobbing, Chloe threw herself into Roxy's arms, burying her face against the older girl's chest. Her whole body shook violently; Roxy patted her on the back, trying to console the girl even as her mind ran through what they still needed to do.

There were almost two dozen bodies strewn around and though the building frame had stopped shaking, rubble still fell from the ceilings and walls, threatening to trap them all inside if they didn't leave soon. How were they supposed to recover the bodies? Yet, how could they abandon these poor children to the rubble and the wreckage?

"Roxy, I know you want to get them all, but we don't have time. This whole place is going to collapse in only a few minutes and I'd rather not be here when it does." Teddy put a hand on her shoulder, making Chloe pull away from Roxy and stare up in awe at the especially tall teal-haired Auror.

Roxy blinked, looking towards the floor, when a thought popped into her head. "What about Aniya? She's the main reason we came here—please tell me Aniya's fine at least?"

He nodded, jerking his head in the direction of where the others had sprinted to safety. "Hannah and Aimee found her friend tied up in one of the testing rooms. It seemed like she'd been interrogated and tortured in the two days since you last saw her, so I sent Aimee ahead of everyone else to take her to St Mungo's to see what they can do."

She wrinkled her nose at hearing about St Mungo's, but nodded understandingly. Uncle Harry would need Aniya's testimony to help shut down Project Starkid once and for all, so it would be best to move quickly so that she could be kept safe from further harm by hiding her away in the wizarding hospital.

Harry waved his hands in their direction, grabbing everyone's attention to focus on the frozen captives he had levitated. As many of the dead bodies that could be recovered were also floating half a metre off the ground—black empty husks that had once belonged to living humans that were taken far too soon.

He looked around grimly at them all and nodded. "Let's go," Uncle Harry said simply.

* * *

Outside of the DoM, Harry thanked his friend Lisa for all her help before sending off a Patronus to Minister Shacklebolt with the message that he had taken over Project Starkid and was currently holding onto a group of people who needed to be officially detained as well as even more children in need of medical attention immediately.

Then, looking around at the cluster of more than a hundred people, he sighed deeply and ordered everyone to follow him to the Aurors' department. They trudged after him, some bleeding and bloody, bruised or burnt.

Chloe very firmly maintained her grip on Roxy's hand while Jo looked at them in bewilderment. The little fifteen year old was acting like a small child clinging to Roxy's side.

It wasn't that Jo thought the girl would attack them—Jo had seen the way she was quick to defend Roxy—but it didn't make sense that someone would be so trusting of someone they had only met an hour ago. Jo was wary of the girl. Perhaps it was the fact that Roxy and Jo had been friends since the third week of school in their first year that made her so distrusting of Chloe. Maybe it was that Slytherins were not naturally trusting people. Or it could be that Jo was suspicious of how quickly Chloe had changed sides.

Standing just past the elevators nearest to the Aurors' offices was the Minister, his arms crossed as the watched Harry come up the stairs and walk the length of the hallway, all the way being followed by his trudging army of rescued child soldiers.

Percy Weasley stood just behind the Minister, his red hair thinning, the frown lines around his mouth the tightest that they'd ever been. He did not look pleased to see his brother-in-law, nor to catch a glimpse of one of his nephews right behind Harry. Percy's scowl deepened further when he spotted Roxy in the middle of the crowd with a child by her side.

"Potter," said Minister Shacklebolt, nodding to Harry; the group stopped in front of the Minister, falling silent. "Are these the ones you told me about? The kidnapped children?"

"Yes. We've separated the ones who kept fighting—I can have Teddy start writing up arrests in a few minutes and I'm sure that now, with all the evidence I have now, the Wizengamot will want arrests. I mean, I've got the stolen kids themselves right here. What more evidence could they possibly want at this point?"

Percy got a strange look on his face, wrinkling his nose slightly.

"Er, yes, about that." Minister Shacklebolt cleared his throat, giving Harry an uncomfortable look. "Phuong Itawa is already calling for your dismissal for ruining her project and, apparently, kidnapping her daughter, Trinh. It seemed you may be getting a trial—just not the one you wanted, unfortunately."

"What? But how can the Wizengamot know about this already? I've only just brought them all up here, how can Itawa already be demanding I be fired for something that happened only an hour ago? That's preposterous!"

It was Percy who answered. "One of your men wrote to Itawa this morning, warning her about what was going to happen. She's spent the whole day rounding up Wizengamot members to have you taken from your position. They say you've crossed the line."

"Who—"

Hannah stepped forward, not looking at her boss as she instead chose to focus all her attention on the Minister. Vikram called out to her, bewildered, but Hannah ignored him.

"What is your name?" asked Kingsley, staring down at the young woman who smirked back at him, acting casual, like facing the Minister of Magic couldn't possibly faze her in the slightest.

"Officially? Hannah Jankowski. Age twenty-six, member of Team Alpha as part of a secret mission to be incorporated into 'regular' society. I am proud to say that we _loyal_ members of Project Starkid will soon control the entire wizarding world. _We_ are the future, no matter how you may try to stop us. I have lived amongst your kind, the inferior kind, and I know how easily you people can be defeated."

Hannah walked over to Trinh's unconscious form, placing her hands over the older female, ignoring the wands pointed at her back.

"Han, why would you do something like this?" asked Vikram, bewildered and heartbroken. "This isn't like you—you aren't a bad person. I _know_ you, you would never do something like this. I don't understand, is—is someone making you say these things?"

She smirked at him. "Vikram, you're the biggest idiot I've ever met. Oh, and here." She took the ring off of her finger and threw it at him. Then, before anyone could react, she grabbed Trinh and the frozen youth from earlier; the three disappeared noiselessly.

"But—but you can't Apparate or Disapparate within the Ministry!" spluttered Percy. "There are rules about these things, there are wards, she can't just do that!"

Kingsley shared a panicked look with Harry, neither quite sure how to advance from what had just happened. Behind them, the rescued ex-members of Project Starkid mumbled nervously to each other. If Trinh was out of the custody of the Ministry, then that meant she could come after any one of them and punished those who had turned away from her and from the project.

"I am not going to arrest you today, Harry, because you are my friend and I respect you as a person, but Phuong Itawa will not let this issue go, you know that, even if you no longer have her daughter. She sees you as the enemy now and as I'm sure you'll remember, Itawa is not someone you want to make enemies with."  
The younger man nodded then directed Teddy to escort the Starkid victims into the Aurors' office, where he and Aubree would find food and water for them all. Meanwhile, Harry and Vikram would take the captured to a holding cell and the dead to St Mungo's, where they could be stored until further notice.

"What about us?" Albus asked his father hesitantly, indicating himself and the three females behind him. "What do you want us to do?"

"Go home, Albus. Don't breathe a word of any of this to your mum, I want to talk over everything with her myself. But she—" He pointed to Chloe, who blushed and hid behind Roxy. "—will need to stay here so we can keep track of her. It's nothing personal, she'll just be safer here with the others, yeah?"

Chloe looked horrified by the idea of being separated from her new protector and she shook her head emphatically, making small noises of panic.

"Uncle Harry, I don't think that's a good idea. Chloe can stay at my house until a trial happens—she'll be just as safe with me as she would be here with the rest of the group and besides that, Chloe is old enough to make her own decision."

He didn't look pleased to be argued with, but Harry nodded and the Aurors disappeared to complete their tasks.

Roxy turned to look at Jo and Chloe, wondering what she was going to do, what with Aniya at St Mungo's and now having a fifteen year old girl going to be living with them, if only temporarily. But she knew Chloe would insist on going wherever Roxy went, which meant she absolutely would not stay here at the Ministry if Roxy did not also stay here for the time being. So now they would be taking care of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger.

And Lucy thought Roxy could make for a good godmother to Ruby? She was panicked by the idea of keeping another teenager alive for a few weeks.

* * *

As he went through the names of those they had rescued, Harry came across one in particular that made him freeze for several long seconds before sprinting off to find an owl.

 _Violet Weasley-Granger, 2019._

He remembered Hermione's pregnancy, which had come as a shock to everyone since, following Hugo's birth, the Healers had told her that she would never be able to have another child. But when it came time for her to give birth, Hermione and Ron had been crestfallen to discover their youngest daughter was stillborn.

But is she was amongst those uncovered from Starkid—then St Mungo's had lied to them. His brother-in-law and best friends had been given a fake body and been told lies.

There was another Weasley.

* * *

When the doorbell to Cerj's home rang, he jumped up, wordlessly Summoning the wand that had become like second nature to him during the past decade since he had abandoned the project for the real world. He waved his wand at the door, making it transparent from his side and then groaned quietly to himself upon seeing who was outside.

Trinh Itawa and the falsely named Hannah Jankowski, along with a younger boy—August Batts, he discovered, looking into the youth's dead—were all looking at his door intently, waiting for him to let them in.

And he'd _have_ to let them in, wouldn't he? Or else, no doubt, 'Hannah' would blow open the front door and he would have to waste time later on repairing the bloody thing.

So he flung the door open, glaring at the three intruders on his doorstep. "What do you lot want?" he demanded, annoyance flaring up and causing smoke to float upwards from his palms. "How did you even figure out where I live?"

The second question was directed at Trinh, who managed to look elegant and regal despite the blood on her grey clothes and the exhausted look on her face. Cerj had always hated how beautiful Trinh was—she was five years older than him and flaunted her talent in his face whenever possible as revenge for the fact that _he_ was supposed to lead Project Starkid over her.

Cerj hadn't seen Trinh Itawa since the day that he ran away and now she was staring at him, a decade older and, if possible, even more attractive than when he'd left, despite all the years that had passed.

"Sergio," Trinh said in an overly warm tone, pushing past him so that the three could get inside. "It's been too long since we last spoke, little brother. I've missed you terribly—you look awful, having to live in this broken world of imperfect humans."

"Someone made you bleed," he replied shortly, glaring at the woman.

Trinh waved her hand, laughing forcibly. "This is nothing, Sergio darling. I've come here to make a deal with you, okay, so just shut up and listen to me for once in your pathetic life."

Not of his own volition, Cerj nodded stiffly and sat down on his couch, staring mutely as Trinh and her lackeys took their own seats. The girl that was not actually named Hannah smirked at him while the boy rubbed anxiously at his forehead using the sleeve of his shirt.

"We were attacked today, Sergio." Trinh scowled at him like this was all personally his fault. "Harry Potter and his gang of idiots took down my family today! They _abandoned_ me for that fool, leaving me with nothing." She sighed. "But we have the opportunity to stop Harry Potter, to crush him, to destroy him entirely. To do so, though, I'm going to need your help, Sergio. So what do you say? Will you help me punish our enemies?"

He grinned, baring his teeth at Trinh. "Sign me up."


	55. Symbiosis and all that jazz

"Her real name was never Hannah Jankowski," Teddy told them over dinner that night. "Hannah Jankowski—the real one, that is—died back in 1993 when she was seven years old. The girl who has been going by her name since 2014 is actually named Elena Ianson. Her parents are Charles and Olivia Ianson and she was their second child, born in 2003. She has three sisters and a brother, most of whom barely remember her since Elena disappeared in 2005 from her parents' garden one morning in April. They reported her missing but nothing every turned up, so her case simply dropped and never solved. Well, until now."

"Why was she sent to Hogwarts using a false identity?" asked Aniya in a hoarse voice, looking at him from her hospital bed. "What did they hope to accomplish?"

Teddy had agreed to meet with Roxy at St Mungo's to get her caught up on what he had discovered. Along with Jo and Chloe, they were sitting around Aniya's bed, the remains of crust-less sandwiches left on their cheap paper plates, abandoned at the end of the bed.

Roxy had spent the whole day avoiding going outside, not wanting t have anything to do with the reporters on her doorstep who were clamouring for an interview concerning what would have been Freddie's twenty-sixth birthday today. Six years had passed since his death and the media still harped endlessly about it just because he'd been a Weasley—and therefore famous for the sake of being famous—as well as an up-and-coming Quidditch star 'stolen before his time'.

She didn't understand the wizarding world's fascination with her brother or the rest of her family, but because _they_ refused to let it go, Roxy chose to instead ignore everything and hide her face. Luckily, reporters weren't allowed to follow her into a private room at St Mungo's, so she was safe here, at least.

"Don't you think, Roxy?" Teddy asked, making the girl blink in confusion, uncertain what he'd just asked her to agree with. He sighed, explaining, "I was just saying that, along with that McClane guy you two mentioned earlier, it seems like Project Starkid was getting cocky enough to think that they could start sending their members to the outside world. I mean, Hannah—er, Elena, I guess—has been living in a family containing falsified memories for fifteen years without anyone noticing. McClane has been living amongst the public since he was sixteen or so. Who knows how many others there are living regular lives, just waiting for a signal? Especially since it turns out that Harry's numbers were _way_ off."

Roxy and Aniya gaped at him while Chloe silently swiped an apple from Teddy's plate, giving it an admiring look before he took a bite.

With a mouth full of food, Chloe told the others, "There was a special group from Team Alpha—and some of Team Beta—that got picked to live amongst the 'inferior' humans. They were all a bit older, the youngest being a couple of eleven year olds like Hannah and the oldest being in their twenties. But that was before anything I can personally remember—I wasn't even a year old when it happened, so everything I've heard is second-hand knowledge."

Teddy nodded. "We didn't know that until Hannah, though. We also thought there wouldn't be more than a hundred kids in total because that's roughly how many were reported but now, having seen the full extent of those we rescued or captured as well as the further records we uncovered, it seems like the number was much closer to three or four hundred kids. What you saw us recover was a little over a fourth of the total victims—the rest are all either dead, soon to be imprisoned, or living under false names, pretending to be like any normal person."

Chloe stuffed the remaining bit of apple into her mouth, cheeks puffing out like a squirrel preparing for hibernation.

"Will...will they ever be able to uncover the bodies?" asked Aniya nervously, thinking of her sister's dead body and shuddering to imagine it laying abandoned forever, never to be given a proper funeral and burial.

"I'm honestly not sure. The whole compound's been destroyed, apparently, though the DoM isn't admitting to anything ever happening. It's possible that, in the future, we'll be able to do something about recovering everything but not right now, unfortunately. I'm sorry."

Aniya let out a deep breath, shoulders slumping forward in despair. Roxy put a hand on her friend's arm, wishing that she could have done something—moved faster, reacted sooner—to make everything right for Aniya. But nothing could bring Aleah back and Roxy was not strong enough to move away all the rubble to uncover the girl's body.

"You know," said Chloe thoughtfully, now chewing on a piece of bread, "Cerj would have been too young for the kids who were let out because he was only like ten years old. And besides, when he left, we weren't supposed to talk about him any more, like what you did when anyone else disappeared—or died, really, though they never let us say that anyone died. But it was different somehow, like all the adults were more angry about his leaving than was normal. And afterwards, they put Trinh in charge of the rest of us. I never understood why _either_ of them were in charge. They weren't the oldest—that was Nathan and Emily and Sonja, but all three answered to Cerj no matter what he said and when he left, they followed Trinh just as easily."

"So he left of his own volition?" asked Teddy suspiciously. "Did anyone else ever do that before or after him?"

"Mm..." Chloe hummed thoughtfully, looking at him for a moment, uncertain. "Not as far as I can remember, no. He was the only one who, after he 'left', got that sort of reaction from the adults. When it came to the rest of us, it seemed like nobody cared."

"How did he get out when nobody else ever could? And why, if he was so important, did he want to leave in the first place?"

Chloe shrugged. "it's not like they ever told _us_ anything. We were just dumb little kids to the people running things. Like, we had all this power but they still treated us like we were mere children who couldn't understand anything."

"Why didn't you ever revolt then? Try to run away or leave?"

Chloe smiled, as though Teddy had just told a particularly amusing joke. "They were the only parents I ever had and they told that they loved me, even with every painful test. The only thing I understood until recently was how to love them obediently."

* * *

"Sergio Antoin Rafael McClane, I cannot believe you!" fused Trinh, fiddling with the cup he'd set up for her. "I always said you were never fit to lead—only ever follow like the little put that you are. And you've proven me right."

Trinh, Elena, and August had been living in Cerj's home for the last four days, quickly driving him crazy with all of their demands. He had become a solitary man over the last decade, unsuited to sharing a living space with even a cat, let alone three other people who seemingly never shut up. He was going mad.

"I believe I've told you to never call me Sergio," he replied coolly, leaning over to slap August's hand when he moved to open the curtains for the fifth time that day. "My name is Cerj, nothing more, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't refer to me as anything else ever again."

She batted her eyelids at him, feigning innocence. "But Sergio, surely you haven't forgotten the love of your dear father, who named you and clothed you, fed you, raised you right up to the day that you tore out his heart and smashed it into a million pieces?"

"Rafael is as much my father as Phuong was ever your mother. Just because they claimed the title of parent doesn't make them so. He never saw me as his son, he never truly cared for me. I was simply just one more pawn for him to manipulate. They never loved us—any of us, don't you see that, Trinh? Or have they brainwashed you so much that the only thing you're capable of believing is what you've been told to believe?"

Trinh shook her head, smirking at him. "I am not the fool here, Sergio. And," she said loudly, slamming her fist on the table, "I'm not the one who turned to daemons to help myself when it turned out that _some of us_ weren't as strong as they thought they were."

Her gaze fell on the strange half-formed figure of what might have been a male at one point, though it now had no discernible features that marked it as anything. The _thing_ turned in her direction, the edges of where its jaw might have been tighten in what appeared to be the closest approximation of a cold smile. It bowed its head slightly, turning to face August, who had opened the curtains once more.

"Don't you like me?" asked the daemon in a raspy voice; with each word, the creature flickered in and out of sight for a split second. "Cerj certainly likes me. He trust me, what is it you said, implicitly?" It chuckled. "Our goals are the same, Itawa, to control humanity where we can and to kill anyone we cannot. Won't you accept my deal?"

Nothing made sense—how the daemon could speak without a mouth or a face was beyond all of them, but speak it did, along with a great number of stranger, darker things. Trinh admired the daemon, but she didn't trust it in the slightest.

"You aren't one of us, though," she replied shortly, glaring at the daemon. "You aren't a part of the family so how could you possibly understand what we have been working towards for thirty years? You aren't even human. How do I know you don't intend on betraying us all the second that we finish serving whatever purpose it is that you need us for?"

The creature chuckled again, shaking its head. "it is not as if any of you are entirely human any more. Oh, yes, I've talked to Cerj about the experiments they ran on all of you children over the years, I know what you're capable of so don't bother trying to fool me. And besides, why would I bring harm to you when the surviving members of Project Starkid could never possibly stop working to my own benefit? Not to mention the fact that I like having a few humans around who are just like me. You're funny and entertaining, like watching a chicken with its head cut off that's running around in a total panic."

August coughed suddenly, pulling away from the curtains, but nobody paid him any attention.

"What is it you think we're going to do for you?" asked Elena, crossing her arms. "Starkid doesn't just exist for your own amusement. We expect to gain something from this relationship as well. Symbiosis and all."

August tugged on her sleep, but she brushed him away irritably, gaze remaining locked onto the daemon.

"Well, I suppose I could use a few more human agents," the creature replied thoughtfully, rubbing at where its chin was supposed to be. "And you're all quite powerful, quite persuasive, which will help to increase our numbers. When we succeed, I suppose I could find it within myself to allow your precious Project to rule over any survivors as long as your promise to remain loyal to me."

The twelve year old boy shook wildly, a pale leaf caught in a rainstorm; he thumped his hands against the wooden panelling of the window while the rest of the group continued to ignore his presence.

Trinh and Elena shared uneasy looks, but nodded. "I would like all of this in writing," Trinh said, raising her eyebrows. "Everyone here signs it using Blood Quills—and Unbreakable Vows. No backing out, daemon. I'll hold you to your word or see you destroyed down to your very particles, understood?"

The daemon, if it could smirk, would have done so in a way that would make it immediately apparent not to trust the creature. But because it could not smirk, it instead stuck out a hand, shaking Trinh's with confidence.

"James Potter is outside!" blurted August, unable to hold himself back as his whole face had gone red by this point. "He's been watching us for almost twenty minutes!"

* * *

Meera wheeled herself down the hallway of the Janus Thickey Ward, waving to the elderly Mr Longbottom as he shuffled by, hanging on a Healer's arm, doing his best to stay upright so that he could make it back to his bed without falling down. He smiled absently at Meera and waved limply back at her.

She was looking for the ward towards the back hallways of the fourth floor which contained quite a large number of people ranging from a few years old to not much younger than Meera, all waiting for either their families to claim them or for St Mungo's to deem them fit for living amongst normal people with someone who could take care of them.

From what she'd seen, there were more than a hundred people shoved into half a dozen wards, resulting in scared and confused children who kept crying that they didn't like it here and that they wanted to leave.

Meera had visited every single day for the past two weeks,, bringing along toys and games to entertain the little ones. She knew the older occupants were grateful for Meera by their pleased smiled and the suddenly appearing sparkle in their eyes whenever she appeared at the door. The younger ones would crowd around her wheelchair, inspecting whatever new things she'd brought that day, enthralled by her presents.

She pushed open the door of the first room in the ward, expecting to be greeted by a few dozen happy children clambering into her lap, kissing her cheeks and asking her in eager voices what Meera had brought today.

Instead, the whole place was empty with every bed neatly made. A quick glance into the other rooms revealed they were just as sparse and abandoned, all signs that anyone had been here stolen away without a clue as to where they could have gone. Everyone had simply left, taking all their belongings with them.

Meera spotted, underneath one of the beds furthest away from the door, a single small shoe, pink with blue polka dots along the toe area. It was a simple hard shoe, the only thing to indicate that someone else had ever been here.

Though she had no idea who the shoe belonged to, Meera knew what its presence meant—someone had stolen all of the Starkid children and taken them away.

Where had they gone and who could have taken them? The ward wouldn't look so nice if they'd been taken by force, so they _must_ have left by choice—or coerced into going by someone who claimed to be a friend. It just didn't make sense.

At a loss, Meera looked around the room, hoping that maybe this was all some big joke and the children would come running back to her, but when no one did, she sighed and rolled herself out of the ward, back to her room. She would need to tell Roxy, assuming that the girl didn't already know. Knowing Roxy, she probably already had a plan for all of this.

* * *

In her dream, Lily was chasing after a red-haired girl not much taller than herself. No matter how fast Lily ran, though, the girl was always faster, staying just out of reach, her long hair flapping in the wind, a teasing red snake that taunted Lily, daring her to move faster. She knew that catching up to the girl was impossible, but Lily was desperate to try anyway, her heart pounding and stomach churning as she kept running to the point of exhaustion.

"Hey!" Lily cried out, taking advantage of a sudden burst of speed to sprint forward, almost within grasp of the girl's hair. "Please, wait! I just want to talk to you, please slow down, I only want to talk! Please!"

The girl turned around for a split second and Lily gasped, nearly falling to the ground as she stopped suddenly, caught in a trap of shock. The girl was Lily herself—or, not Lily, but someone who looked eerily like her.

Ruby Anne Potter Weasley, Lily's daughter, who appeared to be the same age that Lily was now, or close enough that it didn't really matter. The girl ran a little further, but fell still when she noticed that no one was chasing after her; turning around, the two females eyed each other warily, not sure who should move first.

"Ruby?" Lily called, leaning forward to look at her daughter. Snow fell onto her shoulders, coating her hair and upper torso in the cold white flakes. "Ruby, do you recognise me? I—I'm your mum. I'm your mother."

The other girl nodded, crossing her arms over her chest, staring Lily down. "I know who you are, _Mother_ ," Ruby replied coldly, not looking thoroughly impressed to see her. "You're a version of the woman who gave me away and who will always give me away because the idea of raising me terrifies you." She smiled, lips curling upwards, mocking Lily. "And I suppose that you were clever to give me to Lucy—I'm not right in the head, you know, able to _See_ into different times and different possibilities. I wonder where I might have gotten such an awful ability, when everyone says that my birth mother could do the exact same thing?"

"You're a Seer, too?" Lily asked, astonished. Was it because of this that they were speaking together now and why Roxy said she'd seen Ruby in a dream a few months back?

"Isn't it strange how that works out, you think? You'll spend the next two decades trying to avoid the truth of your own powers but because you let me live uncontrolled, I mastered _my_ powers before I was even thirteen years old. And by the time that you will reach the point that I live in, you'll finally want to truly master your powers and discover whether or not your _other_ daughter—your _wanted_ daughter—has the same powers as you and me. She's only six, so I don't know the answer yet, but isn't it amusing to know that what you struggled to run away from for so many years, I have embraced so thoroughly?"

Lily furrowed her brow. "Do you really hate me so much because of a decision I made that, in the end, ultimately improved your life? Is it really that much of an issue to you?"

"Improved my life?" Ruby laughed, though her voice contained no amusement. "You have no idea how I lived my life! My mum was mentally unstable—an emotional wreck!. My dad _left_ us when I was eight years old, and then turned my whole life upside down when it turned out that the people I'd been told were my parents actually weren't! Don't be stupid—don't lie and say you were tying to improve my life when we all know what you really wanted was to get rid of someone who was an unnecessary hassle."

"That's not the case!" Lily protested, though in the back of her mind, she knew it was, at least partially. "I was never going to be a good mum for you, not when I'm only twenty-one and single. Lucy was always the safer, smarter option, don't you see that?"

Her daughter's response was drowned out by a sudden loud crashing sound, like a car hitting a solid brick wall, but Lily was able to catch two words—"alternative" and "Alison"—neither of which made any actual sense. Lily didn't know anyone named Alison, nor could she think of a reason why 'Alison' might be important.

The next thing Lily knew, she was awake again, staring up at the dark ceiling in confusion. She sighed, rolling onto her side to look at the clock. 6.57am—time enough to get up and prepare for the day. Maybe she would go talk to Roxy or visit Meera at St Mungo's.

If there was one thing Lily didn't want to do, though, it was see Lucy and the four month old Ruby. Facing either of them was far beyond anything that Lily wanted to do that particular day—or really any day after this one.

There was an owl sitting on her windowsill—Agatha, which belonged to Roxy and her flat-mates. The bird hooted, tapping the glass to be let in.

Upon being granted entry, Agatha flew straight to Lily's bed, nesting in the warm blankets and dropping a scroll of parchment onto the floor, letting it roll until it bumped into Lily's foot. Agatha, job completed, closed her eyes and fell still as a stone.

 _Lily,_

 _Enclosed is an official copy of your family tree dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Carefully note that all females showing signs of containing Seers' blood are marked, along with my personal mark next your name, since you are not specifically indicated._

 _Records show that Seer's blood goes back to the thirteenth century, starting—roughly—with Iolanthe Peverell._

 _Thought you'd find it all interesting._

— _Roxy_

 _Potter family tree:_

 _Harmand Potter (1846-1906) m. Inaya Fleamont Potter (1851-1907):_

 _Henry "Harry" Potter (1880-1929) m. Davinia Bulstrode Potter (1880-1972):_

 _Fleamont Potter (1896-1979) m. Euphemia Selwyn Potter (1900-1979):_

 _James Potter (1960-1981) m. Lilian Evans Potter (1960-1981):_

 _[redacted]_

 _Harry James Potter (1980-) m. Ginevra Weasley Potter (1981-):_

 _James Potter (2004-)_

 _Albus Potter (2006-)_

Lily Potter (2008-)

 _Elgus Potter (1910-1978) m. Antonia Diggory Potter (1921-1978):_

Elisabeth Potter Reisende (1945-) m. _Riesling Reisende (1942-):_

 _Russell Reisende (1970-) m. Agathe Delacour Reisende (1975-):_

Courtney Reisende (1999-)

Bethane Reisende (2002-)

 _Ricael Reisende (2008-)_

Therese Reisende Selwyn (1972-) _m. Caius Selwyn (1967-):_

 _Bridge Selwyn (2000-)_

Areta Selwyn (2005-)

 _Kristian Selwyn (2009-)_

Rachel Reisende Warrington (1977-) _m. Cassius Warrington (1977-)_

Amalie Warrington (2008-)

 _Gibson Warrington (2008-)_

 _Charlus Potter (1920-1979) m. Dorea Black Potter (1920-1977):_

 _Antonius Potter (1947-1980)_

Lily set the letter aside, rolling her eyes in Agatha's direction. None of this was new information—she knew there were Seers in her family. How else was she going to have strange abilities if they hadn't been passed down to her genetically? Roxy was just being obsessive about all of this.

The only part that caught her eye was the bit right before her father's name that said 'redacted'. Had there been a Potter sibling that died before 1981? Was it possible that, in another life, Lily would have an uncle or an aunt? Or had someone making the Potter family tree simply made a mistake and accidentally added in a child that never existed?

Deciding that such a mystery couldn't be solved right then—and really didn't _need_ to be, what with everything else that needed to be done—Lily put the thought of her mind, figuring she could ask around later to see if anyone knew anything.

In the mean time, Lily needed to hurry to Diagon Alley soon. The man of her dreams would be waiting for Lily at 8.03 for the two of them to bump into each other and have instant sparks of attraction. Lily could hardly wait.

* * *

When Harry introduced the young Weasley, the whole family went into a panic. He'd informed Hermione and Ron ahead of time and they were grateful, if not enraged at the years they'd lost. At least they had their daughter back after years of believing that she was dead.

There were several minutes of everyone arguing back and forth, demanding to know how it could be proven that she was real and then pointing out how similar the little girl looked. She was ten years old, with the same reddish-brown hair as Hugo and the same blue eyes as Rose. Violet was small, a little shorter than Roxy, but she was also still a child and one could tell just from looking at her that she would grow to be just as gangly as her older siblings.

When the family had calmed down, they turned to look at Violet, who'd been staring in shock at her new family. She'd grown up amongst people who abused and tortured her, making it clear they wanted nothing to do with her, but now she had suddenly been thrust into a family, complete with a mother and father that loved her, siblings— _real siblings_ , not just people she was meant to call her brothers and sisters—along with aunts, uncles, cousins, and a friendly-looking set of grandparents. It was all quite a lot to let set in.

"Well, Vi?" her mother asked, giving her an encouraging smile. "Do you have anything you'd like to say to the family?"

Nervously, she nodded, wondering how she could be so lucky to suddenly have this beautiful new life with people that loved her. "Hi," she said in a squeaky voice. "My name's Violet. I guess it's been a long time, huh?"

* * *

Early the next morning, the two flat-mates who _weren't_ currently throwing all of their belongings into trunks stood in the doorway, watching Roxy rush around frantically from one place to the rest, piling everything up and mumbling quietly to herself.

They didn't understand what was going on with Roxy; both had woken up after her and individually were drawn to the noises coming from Roxy's room. The girls shared bemused expressions, trying to make sense of their friend's frantic behaviour but she didn't offer any explanation nor showed any sign of pausing or slowing down as she haphazardly tossed everything around.

"Hey, Rox, are you okay?" Aniya asked, gripped the door frame to keep herself upright. Though she'd been released last week, Aniya still felt weak and jumped into the air any time someone opened a door or made any loud noise.

Roxy didn't stop, only craning her head to briefly look at Aniya while she crossed the room, carrying an armload of books. "Huh? Me? I'm fine, I'm fine. No need to worry about me, I'm just cleaning everything up, everything's totally okay, so you can go back to bed."

"Looks more like you're packing," said Jo shortly, folding her arms and giving Roxy a stern look, shaking her head.

"Wha—what? Packing? Why would I be packing? I _told_ you guys, I'm fine, you don't need to obsessively follow me around all the time like I'm going around the bend at any moment. Maybe I just think my space is too cluttered—too messy—and wanted to merely clean it up. Not everything is immediately the end of the world, you know! I'm _fine_!"

Roxy was yelling at this point, though she didn't know why. Her hands shook and she trembled, feeling like she might start screaming soon if Jo and Aniya didn't leave her alone. Why wouldn't they just leave her alone?

Jo and Aniya shared another uneasy glance, wondering if this was the situation with James Potter's book all over again, though she obviously hadn't found anything like the book to allow to consumer her again.

Jo tugged an armful of clothes from Roxy's arms, rolling her eyes when the smaller girl cried out and tried to get them back. "Roxy, I don't care how many times you say it, I've known you for nearly nine years—I _know_ when something is bothering you, so don't try to lie to me. You're acting manic and nervous, which means you're upset, so tell me what's wrong. Why are you upset right now, Roxy?"

The other girl shoved her friend away but tripped over the edge of her bed and went sprawling onto the floor, scraping the skin above her right eyebrow and causing her nose to start bleeding.

"Roxy!" Aniya cried, rushing to her friend's side, conjuring a cloth to wash the blood off of Roxy's face. "Oh, Roxy, Roxy, are you okay?"

Behind them, Jo began pulling everything back out of the trunk, sending them to their rightful place with a flick of her wand. She was not impressed by Roxy's behaviour; having known Roxy for as long as she had, Roxy had seen her best friend get into patterns like this previously, becoming caught performing the same actions over and over until someone else pulled her out and helped her to act normally again.

"Just slap her and tell her to grow up already," Jo snapped, then ignored Aniya's shocked glare. "If you want to help, then slap her, idiot."

Such a comment might have made her seem heartless, but last time Roxy had gotten caught like this was back in fifth year, when the stress of exams led Roxy to wash her hands until the skin on her fingers began to crack and bleed. The sooner they could get Roxy back to normal the better, even if it meant hitting her in the face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Roxy mumbled, waving her hands at Aniya, even while blood coated her face. "I'm fine, I'm fine, nothing is wrong, please stop touching me."

Rolling her eyes, Jo stomped over, ripping the bloodied cloth from Aniya's hands and using it to hit Roxy in the face with it. Roxy let out a panicked yelp, making her fall backwards and fall silent, no longer mumbling endlessly to no one.

"You can't do that, Jo!" Aniya told her angrily, standing up to jab her finger at the centre of Jo's chest. "You can't just hit people because you feel like it."

Jo shrugged, waving a hand in the direction of the girl laying on the floor. "It worked, didn't it? She's not stuck in an endless cycle any more. Obviously, hitting people works at least some of the time, like right now."

On the floor, Roxy slowly brushed the tears and blood off of her face.

–

He chuckled. Messing with humans was _so_ much fun.


	56. I'd rather dance with you

There were only a few days left until the new year at Hogwarts started and though Roxy herself was no longer a student, she had agreed to take Chloe to the train and see her off; Roxy was not entirely on board with the idea of sending people to a far away school when they'd only been released from their captors a month ago—especially since one of those people was Chloe—but Uncle Harry and Kingsley both signed off on the whole thing and she didn't feel like arguing about all of it.

Chloe had been living with Roxy, Jo, and Aniya for the last few weeks while the other kids had been scattered amongst either their grateful families or foster families that were being observed by the Ministry.

Poor Meera had quite the scare, rushing an owl over to tell Roxy that all the children were gone and Roxy felt bad having to write back that she'd forgotten to tell her friend they were all being taken out of St Mungo's to move on to the next stage of their life.

Jo and Aniya were still watching Roxy carefully like she were a bomb that might go off at any moment but she did her best to pretend like she hadn't noticed.

Currently, Roxy found herself in the Longbottom's Hogsmeade home, staring at Tilly while they both sat awkwardly on separate couches. Neither had spoken beyond the initial 'hello', nor had Tilly yet stood up to fetch the biscuits and tea she claimed were in the kitchen.

Roxy didn't want to be here in the first place, but since Chloe would be starting in the same year as Tilly's brother—both fifth years—Mrs Longbottom decided it would be great for the two to meet and hopefully become fast friends before school started; a similar tactic had been unsuccessfully used on Tilly and Roxy as children.

This was what resulted in Tilly and Roxy silently looking at each other while Dean did his best to get Chloe caught up on the four years she'd missed. It would be hard for Chloe, going to for the first time and immediately starting off in her hardest year. Professor Shrever had said she would allow for students to participate in classes for younger kids if they were struggling and that the could use wandless magic in the beginning if they agreed to predominantly using wands by the beginning of the second term.

"I heard you have a new cousin along with that little kid of your's...er, how's all of that going?" Tilly made a face, like the idea of finding long-lost family members was a baffling concept she'd never considered before.

"It's all really strange, really. I remember how distraught Uncle Ron was after they were told Violet was dead and now it turns out she was stolen from them. I guess they're at least happy now and reunited, which is better than anyone could ever have expected."

"That's true." She cleared her throat and they both went back to being silent for several long moments. "So..." Tilly said slowly, brushing at her dress. "Are you enjoying work then?"

Roxy shrugged. Working for Henrik's was already becoming dreadful, something she regretfully woke up for every day and grumbled through until it was time to go home. It wasn't that she hated her job so much as she didn't feel like going any more. Working had become boring.

"I guess it's fine," she replied, shrugging again. "At least I get paid well and since it'll be my second year of interning—hopefully—they may give me more things to do, so at least I'll have that to look forward to, assuming I don't get fired. How is...whatever department is it that you work for?"

"The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? I'm basically a glorified secretary for the whole department and they treat me like I'm a little girl because the whole office is run by a bunch of old, sexist pigs. You would, since I've been a dedicated, hard-working unit of this job since they hired me more than a year ago, that I would get a little more credit, but no, they have me in the same dead end job as always. I'm not exactly expecting a promotion—just a little bit of acknowledgement that I'm helping."

Roxy wondered if it would come across as rude if she told Tilly that she didn't actually care. Then she wondered if she should care that she didn't care.

"You know, she complains about this literally _all_ the time," said Dean from where he was sitting on the floor, looking up from the Transfiguration book in his lap. "Tilly seems to think that anyone actually gives a crap about her problems, which is silly because that would mean that someone gives a crap about _her._ "

Tilly rolled her eyes in the direction of her little brother before turning back to face Roxy. "So have you, like, adopted Chloe or whatever or does she have a real family to turn to? _I_ certainly wouldn't want to be stuck at your flat."

The girl on the floor paused, shoulders hunching together as she made a face at Tilly's words. Chloe turned her head away so that no one could see the strained look in her eyes or the tense scowl of her mouth.

Roxy coldly explained to Tilly, "Chloe's dad died a few years after she was taken and when Uncle Harry contacted her mum, she apparently told him that she thought Chloe would be better off somewhere else since she's moved on and has kids of her own wit a new husband and they have no desire to incorporate a child that no one's seen in more than a decade. So to answer your question, then, yes, I _do_ intend on adoption Chloe because she needs a family, so I figured, hey, why not me? We're close anyway and I can be trusted."

Chloe picked up one of the other school books from the floor and hid her face in it, ignoring the mildly shocked expression of Dean and the annoyed sigh of Tilly as she went bright red.

"Well, you don't have to be rude about it, you know," Tilly snapped, rolling her eyes one more. "It's not exactly obvious that Chloe is in such a bad situation that the only one who wants her is you of all people."

"And you don't have to be the sort of person who asks awful questions like that."

The two girls glared at each other, the feelings of bitterness and annoyance from their days at Hogwarts creeping up again. They certainly had no intention of ever being real friends, regardless of what anyone else wanted, but the burgeoning respect that had built up over the last few months was quickly fizzling away, replaced by frustration by each other's mere existence. Not that either of them would ever admit it and be seen as the petty one.

"Do you think Chloe will be in Slytherin with me?" Dean asked, trying to change the topic. "That'd be easier because then we could hang out in the common room and do our homework together." He looked to Chloe, who seemed frightened by the idea of being sorted. "Don't worry, sorting isn't that big of a deal. You'll just have to wear a hat and it'll put you into whichever of the four houses you best fit into. You should tell the Hat to put you into Slytherin with me so we can be together, though I'll be in the boys' dorm this year finally."

"'Boys' dorm'?" Chloe echoed in confusion; Dean leaned over and whispered something into her ear. "Oh, okay." She didn't appear particularly thrown off by his confession.

On the couch across from them, Roxy put a hand on her chin, looking at Chloe and Dean thoughtfully. "Well, the Hat puts you where it thinks you fit best so if it says that Chloe fits into, say, Gryffindor then that's where she'll go. House placement shouldn't prevent the two of you from being friends and helping each other out, though."

"I guess," replied Dean, shrugging, "but it wouldn't quite be the same. Like, would you and Tilly be friends if you were in the same house? Probably not, no, but it might have played even a small difference. You certainly wouldn't have the same friends you do now."

"I highly doubt that there is any universe where Roxy and I are good friends. She is simply too immature and anti-intellectual for my tastes."

"And you're too much of a prissy little trollop to even think twice about."

The two older girls continued to glare at each other while Dean and Chloe covered their mouths, overcome by laughter at the actions of the supposedly more responsible people currently in the house. Roxy and Tilly were arguing like children, not that it would be the first time they did so, and they sounded absolutely ridiculous.

"You would think they were closer to _our_ age," Dean muttered to Chloe, who nodded and giggled in response. "I don't see why they insist on hating each other but at least it's fun to watch, yeah?"

Suddenly, Chloe grew serious, the smile fading from her face as she looked at the other three in the room. A thought had just occurred to the girl—or more of a feeling than a thought. She couldn't quite name it, but watching Dean, Chloe knew that she wanted what he had, even if she didn't know what _is_ was that he had to be desired.

She turned to face Roxy, a question coating the inside of her mouth. Chloe needed to ask before the question forced its way out of her. "If you adopt me, wouldn't that make you my mum? And wouldn't that make me your not very much younger daughter?"

Caught off by the question, Roxy nodded uncertainly. She had no idea what the blonde was trying to ask of her.

"But you used to have a brother," Chloe continued slowly, "which means your mum used to have two children. I saw something about it in the papers earlier this months about 'the lost of Freddie Weasley' and it made me wonder if maybe instead of a daughter, you wouldn't mind having a sister instead?"

"What are you asking me, Chloe?"

"Could I be your little sister? Could your mum adopt me? I could become the other child—not a replacement for your brother, but someone she could come to love in the same way she loved him and that she loves you?"

Roxy found that her mouth was too dry to respond and her heart was pounding too quickly, so she merely stared at Chloe and nodded.

* * *

Luckily, after a visit to Diagon Alley, Angelina Weasley had been more than agreeable to adopting Chloe, even if the girl was nearly sixteen and looked nothing like them. She would become family just as much as any naturally born child would have.

Because of the hurry to get the Starkid victims back to their families or some sort of proper guardian, Roxy had already started the Ministry paperwork to adopt Chloe. It was a simply matter of replacing 'Roxanne' with 'Angelina' in all the right places and Chloe Coxley became Chloe Weasley, the unexpected—but most certainly wanted—daughter. The paperwork was filled out and completed by the thirty-first of August.

Molly Weasley, to celebrate her newest granddaughter, decided to throw a party in Chloe's honour as well as allow the Weasley matriarch the chance to throw a 'Heading to Hogwarts' celebration once more, an event which had not been done in two years, ever since Roxy set off for _her_ final year.

Chloe, bemused by the entire situation, merely asked quietly if she could be allowed to invite Dean to the party as well.

Currently, Dean and Chloe were dancing with each other in the middle of the home-made dance floor that Granddad and Uncle Percy had set up. A few of the other Hogwarts' age students who were children of family friends were also around, such as Dean and Tilly's sister Hannah, who would be a second year. There was also the Malfoy girls—seventh year Petra and third year Lyra—who were dancing together, their shoes long abandoned in the grass.

Even the Scamanders were attending, even though none of their kids were going to Hogwarts this year, with Lorcan and Lysander having graduated in June and their little sister Elianne being only ten years old.

A lot of the adults were dancing with each other—all of her aunts and uncles and her Weasley grandparents. Mrs Longbottom, completely red in the face, was dancing with Mr Scamander while Professor Longbottom danced with Mrs Scamander. Teddy and Vic were dancing, as were Molly and Peter, Albus and Scorpius, Rose and Hannai, and Lucy along with some blond man she'd arrived with. Even Faith and Remy were spinning around together, mostly ignoring the rhythm in favour of making themselves so dizzy they fell to the floor.

Emily was here with her wife—keeping their distance from Roxy—while Tilly had, for _whatever_ reason, brought Brennan. Aniya and Desmond, now officially a couple, were swaying on a corner of the dance floor, looking comical considering the height difference between them. Lily had grabbed Hugo's hand a few minutes ago and Lorcan and Lysander had each brought girlfriends.

It was only Roxy who sat on the sideline with no one to dance with, watching forlornly as people spun past her, chatting and laughing.

She sighed, leaning over to snatch up a few blades of grass, tearing them into tiny pieces as she stared into the lap of her dress robes. Jo was too busy spending the weekend in France— _she shouldn't be in France_ Roxy grumbled to herself. _She shouldn't have left all by myself. That's not what a good friend does._

"Don't you want to dance?" Mum asked, dropping into the seat next to her. "I'm sure Chloe wouldn't mind spending a little more time with you before she heads off. You _are_ her big sister now and I think she already looks up to you anyway. Besides, isn't it a little lonely sitting here all by yourself?"

She shrugged, not sure that she really felt like joining all those happy, laughing people when she personally felt so down. Forcing herself to be happy would only make things worse.

"I'm fine just sitting here by myself," she told Mum, doing her best to look unconcerned. "I mean, it'd be nice if Jo were here or if Aniya would come talk to me instead of Desmond for a few minutes, but sitting quietly can be just as relaxing as talking sometimes, so this doesn't really bother me that much."

"Hm." Much didn't seem convinced. "Well, if you decide that you want to be sociable, then I'll be somewhere around, probably talking to Aunt Hermione or something. But I hope you don't just sit here the whole night—that's simply not healthy, even if it may seem relaxing. Talking to people is good for you, you know."

She got up, missing Roxy mutter to herself, "Maybe for someone like you, but talking to so many people for too long would drive me crazy."

Alone once more, she put her head in her hands, letting out a huge sigh and wishing she could just go home and lay down, refusing to acknowledge that there was an entire world outside of her four walls and a door. Yes, she knew that this whole night was supposed to be about Chloe and all the others who were still Hogwarts age, but Roxy certainly didn't fit into this situation and she felt more out of place than anything, like she had been invited to something she was not really wanted at. It didn't really make sense—just a feeling she had and couldn't shake off.

Roxy had been feeling that way more and more frequently as of late, like she wanted to do nothing but run away from all of this, to simply leave and never come back. There was no logical reason for _why_ she felt this way—at least not one that she could find—but the feeling wouldn't leave her alone, a constant reminder in the back of her head.

"Oh, hey, it's my favourite cousin," said Lily, sliding into the seat next to Roxy and giving her a casual grin. "I decided to ditch Hugo after he started telling me the same story about his flat-mates for the third time." She rolled her eyes. "I think he's begun to go mental in his old age."

Still caught up in her thoughts, Roxy furrowed her brow in confusion. "Hugo's the same age as you, Lils. He isn't old, he's just slowly going crazy from being a member of this family. Not that I blame him in the slightest; some days I feel the exact same way."

"It was a _joke,_ Rox," Lily said, rolling her eyes. "I swear, you act so seriously all the time now. I don't understand what's gotten into you as of late, but you are definitely not the Roxy Weasley that I remember."

"Well, maybe I'm finally maturing, since that's what everyone has demanded of me for as long as I've been alive," Roxy snapped, not sure why she was angry. "Maybe I don't think your dumb jokes are funny any more and neither are you! Have you ever considered that, even while you get older every year, you''re still an immature little girl who manipulates people into liking you?"

Lily gaped at Roxy, tears pooling in her eyes as she blinked rapidly. She covered her face with her hand, letting out a small gasp.

Immediately, Roxy felt bad for what she'd said, even if she did mean some of it, but she knew apologising to Lily right now wouldn't do anything so she merely tried to look remorseful and hope Lily was in a more forgiving mood than normal.

Not, Roxy realised quietly, that she actually particularly cared one way or another whether or not Lily forgave her.

"You're such a bitch, you know that?" Lily said through her tears, which Roxy was now beginning to suspect were less than genuine. "Maybe you'd care more about me if I died—except that didn't help endear you to your drunk of a father or jackass of a brother, so why should I really expect any different of you now?"

Roxy's head snapped up and she glared sharply at her older cousin. "You take that back right now, Lily Luna Potter. That's not fucking true and if you don't fucking take that back, I'll punch your goddamn face in!"

No one had noticed that the two girls were now both on their feet, hands balled into fists as they stared each other down, thinking dark thoughts.

"Everyone dies, Roxy, and it's perfectly natural to grieve when it's someone close to you. But I remember when Freddie died and when Uncle George died, you barely even shed a tear. That's not normal, that's not human. _Are_ you even human, Roxy? Or is that you're secretly, that you're not really a human and that's why you don't care about anyone but yourself?"

"Oh, really?" Roxy laughed bitterly, overcome by the sudden desire to hit Lily so hard that she had a permanent red spot on her face. "Because everyone _totally_ believes that you gave Ruby up out of the goodness of your own heart rather than because you're a selfish, vapid, self-consumed slag who throws her own daughter away and tosses the father of that child in the gutter. And why is that? Oh, that's right, it's because you're physically incapable of giving a single about anyone who isn't named Lily Luna Potter! You call _me_ selfish? Have you looked in a mirror recently?"

"Er, Roxy, Lily?" asked Chloe quietly, suddenly appearing between the two of them. She furrowed her brow, looking confused as to why they were so angry with each other.

Lily turned to look at the teen, rolling her eyes. Chloe and Lily had not immediately hit it off, presumably because everyone was so fascinated by the newest member of the Weasley clan, meaning Lily had fallen by the wayside once more as just another cousin in an exceedingly large family.

"Did you want something, Chloe?" Lily asked in an overly sweet tone, practically sneering at the girl. "Or are you taking after your adoptive sister and bothering people who're obviously too busy to talk to you?"

"Don't be rude to her," Roxy snapped.

"I just wanted to know if you guys wanted to dance," Chloe mumbled, blinking rapidly. "But if you guys are fighting, I can leave, it's fine. I don't want to make anyone upset by interrupting. I'm terribly sorry."

She turned to leave but Lily suddenly lunged for her, grabbing the blonde's wrist and twisting it slightly, making Chloe gasp in pain. She tried to pull away from the older girl and found that Lily's grip was too strong to break out of. Tears formed as the pain increased, yet Lily still would not let go.

Chloe whimpered quietly, looking to Roxy with a frightened glance. "She's hurting me, Roxy. _They're_ hurting me. Make them stop, it hurts. I don't like it."

"' _They_ '?" Roxy asked, eyes widening as she looked at Lily more intently. She noticed the flushed skin tone, the slightly unfocused look in her eyes, the twitching smirk of her mouth. "Chloe, are you saying that the Faceless One has inhabited Lily?"

The blonde's face screwed up in confusion. "Who is the Faceless One? They won't let me go, Roxy! Khiroxattianrewtoroaxkrangphru! It's inside of your cousin right now, hurting me. Please, please, make them stop, make them let me go!"

Roxy had no clue what that weird sounding word was, but she _did_ understand 'make them stop'. Abandoning her rage at Lily's words in favour of moving with pure hatred of the daemon, she threw herself at Lily, knocking the redhead to the ground and sending Chloe sprawling.

Lily growled at Roxy, making a low guttural noise in the back of her throat, lunging for Roxy's wand. The two girls wrestled around on the edge of the dance floor, rolling into the grass as they hit and slapped and scratched at each other, Roxy screaming obscenities while Lily—or rather the daemon inside of her—continued to howl senselessly like an animal, hissing at Roxy.

"Let go of me, you prat!" Roxy shrieked, pushing Lily away, hitting her cousin in the face as she tried to kick her wand out of the way so that Lily couldn't get to it.

Someone grabbed her from behind, causing Roxy to swing wildly, fearing that one of his stupid minions had gotten hold of her. Roxy thrashed around, hoping to loosen herself, but whoever had her trapped was physically much stronger than Roxy—and her wand had been kicked out of sight, not available to defend herself.

"Stay quiet," whispered James Potter into her ear and though she initially jolted, hitting the top of her head against his jaw, Roxy fell still, laying limply in his arms.

James Potter set her down on the ground gently, holding out Roxy's wand. She grabbed it and craned her head, looking around for her daemon-possessed cousin, who was now standing a few metres away, holding herself in a predatory stance as she glared at them both.

"Freezing time again, Potter?" Lily hissed coldly, shaking her head at them. "That's cheating." She pretended to pout then looked towards where the unfrozen Chloe was gaping at her. "Oh, look, Mummy's favourite. Did you know that Mummy Coxley loved you _so_ much, in fact, that she sold you off as a science experiment just to get rid of you? And Daddy was ever so sad about that, wasn't he? Ran halfway across the continent looking for you and died before he could. So who is there to love Chloe now?"

"Shut up!" Roxy stood up, glaring at the daemon inhabiting Lily. "You shut the hell up! There's plenty of people who love her, so leave Chloe alone. She's not involved in any of this anyway, don't drag her into it."

One thin red eyebrow raised up in amusement as Lily smirked at them. "Isn't that adorable? 'She's not involved'? I didn't realise you were so naive, Miss Weasley. Chloe is _very_ important to my plan. Why do you think Starkid bought her in the first place? After all, she isn't useless trash like you are, only good for breeding and bleeding. I have real use for Chloe."

Then, waving her hand, the daemon sent James Potter sprawling so that his form flickered in and out. Lily chuckled coldly to herself to see him groan in pain and made him fall over once more as he tried to stand back up.

James Potter looked up and glared at the daemon from where he remained in the grass. "Enjoying ourselves are we, then? All of this is so amusing to you?"

"Which part? So easily beating you? Inhabiting your own granddaughter's body? Knowing that there's no way for you to stop me from taking Chloe and leaving this miserable place? Well, yes, in fact, it _all_ amuses me. Even in death, you struggle so much to stop me, yet fate in inevitable, isn't it, James Potter?"

"It isn't fate that you'll win, daemon. We can still defeat you. We still have ways of stopping you before you can destroy the planet."

"With an infant?" Lily's lips curled upwards like she'd smelt something bad. "Your Ruby doesn't scare me, James Potter, nor will it ever. I cannot be frightened by a mere girl, regardless of any prophecy."

"When you're taken down by 'my Ruby' as you call my great-granddaughter, just remember that you were warned. You may say that humans are brash and unreasonable, but acting like a human won't help you win the war. Now, since you're proven your point, can you please release my granddaughter and go back to hiding in your hovel like you normally do?"

The daemon let out a low growl but nodded and, in the next instance, Lily was drained of the extra presence inside of her, leaving the redhead to groan and sway wildly for a few seconds before crashing into the grass, now unconscious.

"Is she okay?" Roxy asked, looking towards Lily's unmoving form. "The Faceless One left a little too easily, don't you think? He doesn't normally just walk away from these situations without exchanging more than a few harsh words and vague threats."

"He's weak," James Potter replied in a low voice, also turning to observe his unconscious descendant. "With a battle coming up, all of his power and energy has gone to getting everything ready as well as preparing his enemies, leaving the Faceless One tired—it's exhausting for him or it or whatever to inhabit a human body, let alone jump from one person to the next, leaving him constantly drained of everything."

"Then why do it in the first place if it's so taxing? I mean, we already know about the evil, people-hating daemon who wants to ruin our world, we don't really need constant reminders of it, even if his being exhausted is ultimately beneficial to us taking him down."  
"I don't know why, Roxanne. Perhaps from a sense of twisted amusement is one reason or because he's a psychotic daemon who doesn't work using the same logic as us."

"They'll come back," muttered Chloe suddenly, her skin pale as snow. "That daemon—the one we call Khiroxattianrewtoroaxkrangphru and Trinh and all of her followers are going to join up and rain down on us with everything they have. People will die, people will be hurt. The whole world is going to be destroyed, do you realise that? Why didn't anyone stop him? Why hasn't anyone done anything to make sure he can't do all the terrible things he has planned for humanity?"

"Because no one _can_ stop him yet," James Potter told her, "not yet at least. That 'Ruby' he referred to is one half of a prophecy, the only thing that can stop him permanently. Anything else we try would only ever be temporarily solving the problem. And what we need to do instead is to follow the script, stick to how things must happen now matter how we personally feel about how we ought to get to the end goal."

"You're going to let people die?" Chloe asked in disgust then flashed a frustrated glance at Roxy, who raised her eyebrows. "Doesn't anyone care that innocent people are going to lose their lives because we'll be doing nothing to stop it from happening?!"

James Potter, eyes full of pity for the teenager, shook his head, explaining, "This battle is fated to happen, no matter how we feel about it. As a dead person who exists outside of the linear stream of consciousness, I've run through many possible futures, but no matter what, the Faceless One will always attack before September ends and people will always die. When I say nothing can be done, I truly do mean it. This battle is one of those things that will always happen no matter what we do. I'm sorry."

"I don't believe you. I don't believe that there is _nothing_ that can be done to save the lives of innocents. You simply haven't tired hard enough or looked deep enough."

His form flickered in and out of focus as the pity morphed into a glare, rolling his eyes now at Chloe, who stared defiantly right back at him, daring the ghost to say anything against her. Chloe was rather bold, Roxy thought to herself, especially for a girl who had essentially lived in a cult right up until a month ago.

On the ground, Lily groaned, beginning to wake up as her body began shifting back and forth ever so slightly.

"I suppose that's my cue to leave, then," said James Potter briefly, glancing at his granddaughter. "I'd prefer not to cause Lily any more undue stress by forcing her to acknowledge her long-dead grandfather again."

"Are you going to unfreeze everything?" asked Roxy, pointing to the crowd of frozen Weasleys who had paused mid-dance, a few of them turned to look at Lily and Roxy when they started yelling at each other.

"The second I disappear, life will go back to normal. But...ah, you'll tell your little friend not to mention any of this, right? My assistance is still meant to be incredibly downplayed, if you don't mind, so I'd appreciate if you kept that quiet."

Roxy looked him directly in the eye, feeling a brief moment of passion. "Chloe's not my friend, she's my little sister—and she's smart enough to know not to tell anyone about this without needing to be reminded."

Chloe nodded in agreement, pleased that Roxy had referred to her as 'little sister'. It was the first time she'd ever felt something _real_ when someone called her a sister or a daughter or anything like that. It finally meant something.

Not really sure where that was coming from, James Potter merely shrugged. "If you say so," he replied, then disappeared silently.


	57. Moving up but (not) improving

Dear Roxy and Ange,

I was placed into Gryffindor last night by the Hat thing that you and Dean told me about. Everyone was shocked by those of us from Starkid being there, even after the nice Head Lady explained everything. I don't think my being sorted under my new name of Weasley helped me much 'cause it seems like nearly everyone at this school knows about your family. Dean says this is because you're all a bunch of famous heroes. The Head Lady says to call her Professor Shrever and she asked lots of questions last night after the sorting. They were sort of weird questioning, like could I turn a raven into a writing desk or recite the ingredients of the Polyjuice Potion. I'm glad you made me study, Roxy, or else I might be stuck with the really little kids. Instead, I'm to split my time between fifth and third year classes. There are three other kids from the Project who're in Gryffindor with me, though none are in the same year, not that I particularly mind. I'm not sure how fond I am of my room-mates, who seem to think it's weird that I'm friends with a Slytherin. Is this sort of thing not normal? Anyway, Hogwarts is very pretty and I can't wait to get started.

Love,

Chloe

P.S. Maybe I'll even starting calling you Mum soon, instead of Ange! You're certainly the best mother I've had so far.

* * *

Dear Roxy,

Sorry for assaulting you the other day. I know it'd be easier to pretend like I wasn't in control of myself and it was all the Faceless One making me act out, but your right, I _do_ need to be more mature and start accepting that I've made mistakes and hurt people over the years. And you're also right that I gave Ruby away because I'm selfish, but I'm also afraid. You keep rejecting the offer to be her godmother for the same reason I gave up on being her mum: we aren't ready yet, either of us. If all I think about right now is myself, how am I supposed to also care for an infant, you know? Maybe when I'm older and have settled down, I'll make for a better mum, but Ruby needs someone to take care of her _now_ , not five or ten years down the road.

I'm also sorry about what I said about your dad and brother. That was totally uncalled for and I understand why you're still mad at me. Joanna makes for a good guard dog, since she won't let me in to speak with you, no matter how often I beg or apologise. I guess it just never really occurred to me that Slytherins could be loyal in their own way. Though I suppose there are a lot of things I still need to figure out about life, like how to be a better cousin, friend, and all around person.

Please don't be mad at me any more.

Love,

Lily

* * *

Miss Weasley,

As we transition from one work year to the next, your work and effort has been evaluated by your supervisor, Starsha. Your value as either an asset or a hindrance to this company has been carefully considered and the Internship Board has recommended that the decision of your continued placement be followed through to the next year.

This promotion comes along with a ten galleon per hour increase in wages as well as access to the private stock of the company to begin the 'research' portion of your work assignments. You will still be expected to stay within the interns' quarters and any new creations you make during this time will not receive full compensation, but by moving into your second year, Henrik's Potions Co. shows that it has faith in your ability to accomplish great things while in our employment.

Please note that you will also still be held to the same standards as before and expected to always maintain this standard, such as staying out of the media or avoiding any unnecessary scandals that may be unfavourably tied to the company. Thank you for this continued cooperation.

Looking forward to another year of working together,

Adalbert Finnerty, Head of the Internship Application Program 2009-Present; Head Potioneer 1995-2009; 1st in Potions at Hogwarts during the class of 1990; 4th in the class of 1990

* * *

Chloe,

Congratulations on making Gryffindor! I hope you have a great year and expand your circle of friends. Please try to refrain from getting into any fights, as I would prefer not to receive owls about your behaviour as frequently as I did with my older two children. Make sure to study hard and do your homeworker, but also have fun over the year. Tell Professor Shrever I said hello and give Professor Longbottom love from the entire Weasley family.

Love,

Ange

P.S. Feel free to call me whatever you want, as long as you're comfortable.

P.P.S—from Roxy. We love you, please stay safe and keep an eye out for any unusual behaviour in case things begin to change amongst the Starkid members.

* * *

To Lily:

I will forgive you when I deem it most appropriate. If you're going to be an arse, at least expect that there will be some consequences for doing so. However, I'm not mad at you, only frustrated about what happened.

See you Sunday,

Roxy

* * *

You know what's expected of you, you know what is required of you. To fight it not only defies everything we've been taught to believe but also turns away from the very facts of life that cannot be denied. People will die no matter what we do, so we might as well fight for what we know to be right. You may regret our actions now, but when the time comes, the decision you chose to make with me will have no limits, no end, to the rewards we shall draw. You have already turned away from this family once but I assure you that _this_ time, this is a family that cannot be avoided or corrupted. You agreed to this, don't forget, and the vow we made together shall not be broken.

This is a new life we've made together, you and I. Don't you dare try to turn away, Sergio.

-Itawa

* * *

Mum and Dad,

Following the strange events of the other night (perhaps you guys will want to cut Lils off from excessive drinking in the future) I took Caroline to my flat and, after a lengthy discussion, she has agreed to marry me. We haven't set a date yet (we haven't really set anything yet actually) but the important thing is she has a ring and we're going to get married at some point. If you guys want to maybe feel even more proud of me, I told you about this before I told Colin or Nate. Like, relatively speaking, I told you first because I am writing and sending this letter before I will see them. And, after all, haven't you always said it's the thought that counts?

-James

P.S. No, she's not pregnant, no matter what anyone else might say!

* * *

Georgia,

Remember the guy I told you about, James Potter. The one I've been dating who's probably the best boyfriend ever, even if he is a bit off sometimes, mentally speaking. Well, I hope you like the sound of being the maid of honour because he asked me to marry him—again, yes I know—but this time I said yes! It was only a few days ago, so we haven't really planned anything out; I don't think he's even told his parents yet to be completely honest, but we're definitely getting married. I'm thinking an autumn wedding would be lovely, what do you think? Oh, we'll have to do lunch! Could you possibly meet me at Merlin's Safe at, say, half-past noon and I'll tell you everything?

Oh, I'm so excited!

Lots of love from,

Caroline

* * *

Carrie,

You do realise that, traditionally, the maid of honour isn't a pregnant, not-single woman? Besides, knowing you, engaged or not, I'll be married before you and this Mr Potter will be.

(Would this happen happen to be the same James Potter from the year above us at Hogwarts? If so, what a catch!)

Anyway, of course I'll be your maid of honour, no matter what anyone else thinks, because you're my best friend and I love you more than anything.

Half-past it is.

Kisses,

Georgia

* * *

Philip,

Could you meet me at Merlin's Safe for lunch today? I'd love to talk to you about being formally introduced to the family. I know that they met you, sort of, back at the party we had at my gran's, but the situation didn't allow for a proper explanation and my mum is getting antsy about finding out who you are. Don't get mad or anything, but I haven't told anyone about you and I. After the last boy I dated, I'm still so nervous about what everyone else will say. But I personally think you're perfect.

So lunch?

And if you meet my family, you could meet Ruby, too—oh, she's almost five months old and you said you like little kids, right? Please say you'll have lunch with me and come meet my family, will you, Philip? I know we've not been together for two months yet, but you said you loved me and I love you and I know my family will like you because you're an absolute darling.

Merlin's Safe, yes? See you there.

With so much love,

your lovely Lucy

* * *

James,

As your mother is currently unable to due to being in Holyhead, let me congratulate you and Caroline on her behalf as well as congratulate you myself. It is always a beautiful thing to realise that you are mature enough to want to take that next step with the person you love. Caroline is a lovely girl and I know the two of you will be wonderful together.

We are both very proud of you, James, and we're happy that you've found someone that makes you happy. Just remember that it's perfectly fine to be engaged for a length of time before you get married. Your mother and I were engaged for nearly two years before we were finally ready to make things official. Do whatever makes the most sense to you, but always keep in mind that rushing into things isn't the best option.

Say hello and send our love to Caroline.

Love,

Dad (mostly) and Mum (in spirit)

P.S. We didn't think she was pregnant but I'm glad to hear that's not going to be the foundation of your marriage. Mum and I are a bit too young to officially become grandparents.

* * *

Molly—

Even your prat baby cousins are getting engaged before us! They're all going to be married and have prat babies before you even consider saying yes. Do you really just hate the idea of being married to me that much?

—Peter

* * *

Lovely, foolish Peter,

First of all, why do _you_ of all people know about by 'prat baby cousin's' engagement before I do? Who even told you that?

Second of all, my cousin James' decision to tie the knot has nothing to do with my personal feelings concerning you or the idea of marrying you, both of which we have discussed at length several times before.

Even if we are the last to be married, I would like to do it on my own terms rather than rushing into thing simply because everyone else is settling down and making everything 'official'. I will say yes when I am ready to and not a moment before.

Please stop pressing the issue,

Molly

* * *

Dear Roxy,

Can you please respond? I know you're mad, but I've apologised and I really do mean it when I said I was sorry. Besides, you said some pretty shite things to me as well and I'm not exactly holding it against you is it's rather shite of you to continue ignoring me because of one simple fight. Do you really want to hold this against me for the sake of a single comment? I though we were family—you know, Weasleys, who're supposed to always love each other and look out for one another. Can you please just acknowledge me? I'm trying to make things better.

It takes two to repair a relationship you know,

Lily

* * *

Lily,

Accusing me of immaturity isn't going to endear me to you, darling cousin of mine. Though we may be family, I am not required to automatically forgive every damn thing you do wrong. You can be an entirely terrible, awful person, even if we are related, and I will not forgive you so easily, shared blood or not. When I'm ready to accept your apology, I will but until then, you'll just have to accept that sometimes what you say or do will have consequences that are not so easily ignored.

And as you'll notice, I at least answered.

—Roxy

* * *

Roxy,

Well you don't have to be an arse about it, you know. You have no idea how difficult life is for me right now and I don't appreciate your snippy attitude about everything that's going on. You could simply cut me some slack every now and then, you know, and realise that everyone is going to make mistakes and fuck up every now and then. I've apologised, I'm trying to make things better again, but all your doing is shoving me away and putting all the blame on me even though you were just as involved in this fight as I was and you said some pretty shite things as well that I'm not holding against you, but of course Miss Roxanne Weasley is utterly perfect, isn't she? Roxy Weasley can do no wrong, isn't that right?

Well, I think you're a right prat, you know that? You're a selfish little prat and you think you're better than everyone else.

Well you can fuck off.

—Lily

* * *

Dear Mum,

Teddy and I will, unfortunately, be unavailable, as he has been granted to take a holiday away from work and we're taking advantage of the situation to visit some friends we don't get to see regularly any more. We've got a friend taking care of the kids—not Mia, don't worry, we're leaving them with Alicia, though how she'll take care of the boys and her own three children is more than I want to think about, at the moment. However, it will only be until the end of September and you can still take them off of Alicia's hands over the weekend. I'm sure she'll be begging you to do so by the first Saturday of the month.

When Dad comes back from Egypt, tell him we send all our love—and also tell Louis and Rayna that, if they're going to start living together, it's really not becoming of them to constantly be over at my house when they're having an 'off' day, which seems to be pretty much every day when it comes to those two.

Anyway, Teddy says hi, but he's 'too busy' to write, which is his way of getting out of familial obligations. I hope you're having a lovely time since I last spoke to you and I will see you next month when we return.

Lots of love,

Victoire (& Teddy to a lesser degree)

* * *

Trinh,

That is absolutely not fair to put expectations onto me. I've done my part of this whole mess, I don't see why I should be expected to contribute any more effort than I already have when I don't even give a damn about your plan or initiative or whatever the hell else it is you think you're going to get out of this plan. After all, you may be one of those people who've been duped into believing in prophecies because of all that nonsense with Harry Potter and whatnot, but just because you're a naive fool doesn't mean I am too. I don't buy all of this 'ice and fire', 'rubies and wise men' crap, not when prophecies can be interpreted in a million different ways and most prophecies are just crap to trick gullible idiots into believing that life is controlled by something outside of human control. Con yourself into think that you can write yourself into the future in this way, but don't try to drag me into all of this as though I care about any of this. I've done my 'duty', as it were, and I truly don't care what you do now that my involvement has ended. Unless you can confirm with any real certainty that I failed, then you can budge off and leave me in peace until the next stage of our revolution. Unlike you, I truly am busy and would rather not be bothered by personal matters or your neurotic tendencies.

—Cerj, not Sergio

* * *

Dear Mr and Mrs Weasley,

After Mrs Weasley-Granger's latest series of tests, we have come to the conclusion that the surgeries and 'MRI' that you described will not be accessible at St Mungo's, as we cannot allow muggle 'doctors' into our facility and we ourselves are unfamiliar and untrained in the processes that you described and are therefore unable to fulfil your wish. However, if Mrs Weasley-Granger still wishes to seek the advice of her muggle medical professionals, then we at St Mungo's are more than happy to sign off on her medical expenses. Please know that we at St Mungo's would like to be involved in as much of the process of your treatment as is possible and that we wish you a speedy recovery. Thank you for your cooperation over the past few months and we hope you have a better time with the muggles as you work to cure your cancer.

Sincerely,

Healer Hesterpoff

* * *

Dear Lily,

Well at least I'm not a stone-hearted, self-obsessed little slag who doesn't care about anyone else. I mean, how many guys have you slept with over the years have you dated and slept with before abandoning them because they no longer serve whatever sick or twisted purpose it is that you use your 'boyfriends' for? How many times did you tell Tolkien you loved him and that he was the only one for you just for you to ditch him the second that everything became uncomfortable?

I know you think you're happy living this kind of life, jumping from person to person, but you're only just running away from the truth of the situation, which is that you're afraid of making any sort of real commitment with someone because they might leave you or turn out to be using you in the same way you've used so many other people.

And I understand where you're coming from, Lily, because I've been doing the exact same thing since Freddie died. It's why I, on the opposite end of the spectrum never dated anyone before Kieran and why I was so happy that he was low-maintenance. We never had to say that we loved each other or show any signed of intimacy.

While you throw yourself into new situations and an ever-changing string of boyfriends, I shield myself away from everyone. And I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm sorry for everything, for all the names, including the one I called you at the beginning of this letter, and I think I'm ready to forgive you if you can say the same thing about me. Can we just start over and say that we're cool and everything is fine again? Of all my cousins, I'd hate to lose your friendship the most.

So, please, just forgive me and we can make everything right once more? Do you think we could have lunch and talk everything out together, just the two of us?

—Roxy

* * *

Dear Roxy,

Well, I suppose if you insist on apologising, I'll accept it. And might I suggest, if we're going to do lunch, the only real place to go is Merlin's Café because it's more, you know, high brow than some place like The Leaky Cauldron. Or maybe we could just enjoy a nice sandwich in the backyard of my parents house?

I'm glad we're able to talk thing out and continue our friendship. We can be happy, if everything just is discussed calmly and all our problems become solved. I know I can be a bit self-conceited and I'll admit my relationships have been used as a way of avoiding my problems in many ways and I'm glad at least one person has acknowledged that. Some days, I am convinced that the only reason I even date other people is to prove something to myself, but I don't know what that's supposed to be that I need proven. But things are going to change from now on, I can promise you that much.

Love,

Lily

P.S. We're both just a couple of idiots with no clue what we're doing, so I guess if we're going to bitch at each other, maybe in the future, we could bitch about slightly more important things?

* * *

Deer Mummy,

We hav to rite a leter to a body we love very much. I love you very much and I am guna rite a leter to yu. Hallo, Mummy, how are yu tooday? Wat is yur favrit coler? Do you love me? I love yu, Mummy,but rite now I don't like Will he's a big babee. Pleese come bak now.

Love,

Remy

* * *

Georgia,

Thank you for the lovely present of—Caroline says you call it a toaster and oven? I won't say I understand how muggle technology works or why you gifted a toaster and oven to us just to congratulate us on getting engaged, but I'm sure it's a simple and strange muggle tradition that might make sense to me at some point in the future. I am sure that you, as a half-blood, use muggle technology all the time. Like your mother, my grandmother was also a muggleborn, but we don't really use stuff like a toaster and oven at our house. (Yes, Caroline told me about you because I don't recall ever meeting anyone named Georgia.) Caroline said she'll teach me how to use it, though. I hope this is not some strange prank and the toaster and oven won't explode in my face. Though I'm sure that'd be fun to watch.

Sincerely,

James Potter.

P.S. Wait, is this how muggles make toasted bread rather than using Warming Charms? How weird is that, huh? Muggles are so strange.

* * *

Dear Dad,

Scorpius and I were wondering if it was possible that the false premises that I supposedly wanted to interview you and the other Aurors about your jobs could actually become not so false premises? What I mean is that he and I have discussed the situation and we would like to take the next month or so observing the general vibe of the workplace so that it can actually write a book about the Auror career field. I would suggest that I come by roughly three times a week for an hour or two and Scorpius or Jenna would be coming along to sit in with me to hold everything together because as we all know, I'd turn into a nervous wreck and start rambling for hours without getting anything done or really getting much written down. But I promise I wouldn't be incredibly distracting or spill any secrets that the public doesn't need to know about. It is me, after all, who's asking, and you can always trust me to stay true to my word, can't you, Dad? I'm certainly, at least, no Rita Skeeter and that's got to earn me a ton of points.

Anyway, I hope you say yes because having a consistent job for a few months longer as well as something to occupy my time would greatly appreciated. Hope to hear from you soon, then, I guess, either in person or by owl, whichever is more convenient for you.  
Thanks Dad.

Love,

Albus

* * *

Dear Brennan,

I'm not sure I'm ready to let anyone know about you and I being in a...relationship, if that's we're to so eloquently put it. I mean, you're ten years older than me, for one thing, and I don't think a whole lot of people are overly fond of me.

Then again, there are plenty of people who find plenty of issues with what I normally do, no matter the nature of my actions.

It's not as though I'm embarrassed to be openly dating you, only that I fear there may be repercussions, particularly from my end, such as from my mother and father—whose opinions I hold very dearly and with the utmost respect—might potentially find you to be unfavourable.

Do you think we could possibly hold off making our 'relationship status', as you keep referring to it, official for just a few weeks longer? I think I still just need some more time to really get used to being in a more serious partnership. I want to make sure we're going somewhere with all of this before I go running through the streets, professing my love for Brennan Klein. Not that I'm saying I love you or anything—it's way too early in the 'relationship' to be saying that, but you know what I'm trying to say. Just—let's take things slowly, okay? Let's be mature about everything.

—Tilly

* * *

Dear Harry,

They're going to try you for breaking and entering as well as interfering with government property. I don't know the full details of your charges, mostly because I think the logistics of it all are still being worked out, but so far, it isn't looking good for you. Do you think you'll be able to gather up enough of a defence for yourself by the end of September? It sounds as though that's around the time that your trial will be called.

I'm really not supposed to tell you about any of this because the Wizengamot wants to catch you off-guard but you're my friend. Please take care of yourself and family. I don't want to see anyone get hurt because of this.

Sincerely,

Kingsley Shacklebolt

* * *

Dear Roxy,

Enclosed is the most recent letter that Tolkien sent me and it both very weird and incredibly unsettling. Please tell me that you see the madness in all of this?

Lily

* * *

Dear Lily,

I still love you very much and I wish you'd at least stop to consider that the two of us could work out together. I know we've had our issues over the years, but I truly do believe that you are the only one for me and that I could never love another woman in the same way that I love you. Can't you just give me another shot? All I'm asking is that you consider, just for a few months, that the two of us could be just as good together now as we were at the beginning of our relationship. Isn't it possible that you, Ruby, and me could be a proper family together? Don't you think you could ever love me again, like you used to? I guess it's just that I still really don't understand why you would claim to love me only to throw me away the second that things started to become messy. Are you really going to turn your back on me without ever bothering to explain what it is I did that you decided to break up with me? Can you please just give me a chance, Lily? Please, I'm going crazy being away from you and I can hardly stand it any more, knowing that we'd make a great couple once more if you'd only just give me another chance. Please, Lily? Please, I'm begging you, say that you love me still.

With all of my heart and soul and love,

Tolkien

* * *

Dear Chloe,

No matter what happens at Hogwarts, I want you to keep yourself safe, okay? There are a lot of shitty people that you're going to meet this year who will judge you for any number of reasons imaginable and a number of reasons why that no sane person will ever be able to imagine. I want you to remember that I love you and Mum loves you and you'll always have Dean to look out for you and make sure no one tries anything.

Not, I'm sure, that you can't manage to protect yourself, with your intelligence and skills. You're quite talented, anyone can see that, and I know you'll learn to do a lot of good during your time at Hogwarts.

Just make sure that you are able to read every situation properly and always think about the consequences of what you're doing and who you're associating yourself with. I know we haven't known each other for very long and I know you're already almost sixteen, but you're really like my little sister and, therefore, I swear to protect you until the day I die. I'll always look out for you no matter what.

Love, Roxy, your amazing older sister who has your best interest at heart all the time

* * *

27 September, 8.10 am. Bring everyone and make sure they're prepared. We'll need all hands on deck if we want this to work. Don't be late.

-Itawa


	58. Only two things are certain in life

Of al the cousins to get engaged, Roxy had not expected James to settle down so quickly. Sure, anyone could see that James and Caroline were madly in love with each other, but they hadn't even been dating for a year yet. How crazy was it to think that by this time next year, the couple would most likely be officially married?

"Do you think they'll get married as quickly as they got engaged?" Lily asked, not very quietly, as they waited for Grandmum Molly to finish preparing Sunday dinner. "When they get divorced, do you think they'll speed through _that_ process as well or do you suppose that's the part they'll take slowly so they can tear each other limb from limb I bed that'd be fun to watch. I'd pay good money, actually, just to see their inevitable downfall."

Hannai, Rose's wife, gave the younger female a scathing look. "You _do_ know that's your brother and future sister-in-law that you're talking about, right? Like, you shouldn't be actively campaigning for their lives to go to shite like that."

"Whatever," replied Lily with an unconcerned shrug. "It's not as though I really actually care. Mostly shocked, is all, when it comes to James. See, the thing about him is, when he dates someone, he'll be super serious about the relationship itself but he's never been serious about moving anywhere with the relationship. But apparently, James has decided that he's madly in ove with some random girl that we hardly even know."

Lucy, without looking up from her sketchbook, interjected with the quiet response, "Actually, Carrie's really nice and sweet and you'll love having her as a new family member. She's quite the sweetheart, even since Hogwarts."

"Oh, is she _Carrie_ now? Some sort of perfect, amazing, fantastic person that everyone loves her so much even though she's a little slag? Yeah, yeah, I'm glad that I'll have to see her every damn Sunday. Every bloody Sunday with my brother and his whore of a wife!"

The other females all turned to look at Lily in confusion and shock, bewildered by her outburst. Up until the rumour of their engagement began to spread around the family last week, Lily never expressed an issue with Caroline but now all she did was hurl insults at the blonde, seemingly for no reason at all.

"Well, she's not marrying you, she's marrying your brother, so if you have a problem with it, shut the hell up and keep it to yourself. There's no sense in ruining James' happiness just because you've turned so bitter at only twenty-one."

Lily scowled in Molly's direction but didn't—or couldn't—give her a response.

"It's not like she's a bad person either," Molly continued icily. "In fact, I rather think you don't dislike Caroline so much as you're jealous of the idea that James finally has a female in his life who is more important than you are. I mean, you've been his little sister, the best and greatest girl he's ever known but suddenly he's getting serious about someone else and that upsets you because you feel like you're going to be replaced. You never had an issue with Camille or Melody or Kaelyn or Nevaeh or any of the vast number of other, far inferior girls he's dated because you always knew it would never last. But Caroline and James are happy, they're serious about each other, and that terrifies you. However, none of that warrants you the right to be a bitch about all of this just because you're worried that you're no longer number one."

"Whatever," Lily said again. "I don't have to listen to any of this, especially since none of it is true anyway." She got up from her seat, staring the rest of them down for a second before stomping out of the room, flipping them off as she left.

Molly looked around at the other females and shrugged. "Well, if she's going to be an arse about it, we don't really want to hear her talk either, right?" She smoothed out the edges of her robes, mildly uncomfortable by the awkward silence. "Anyway, does anyone have anything less stupid than that to talk about?"

While the others broke into casual conversation, Roxy looked into the next room to where Lily had situated herself at the kitchen table. The redhead scowled at the wooden surface, glaring daggers into its etchings. Her fists were clenched and when Hugo moved over to talk to her, Lily merely waved him away, looking more than a little annoyed about the whole situation. Then, once Hugo had backed away in confusion, Lily let her head drop onto the table and groaned to herself.

Not really sure what to do, Roxy got up, stuffing her hands into her pockets as she left the sitting room. No one noticed her getting up so she said nothing, choosing to silently wave at an uncaring Lily as she passed through the kitchen and headed outside, wishing Teddy were around to help improve the situation.

But he and Victoire were both on holiday and Roxy really didn't want to drag any of the older adults into it all, especially not Uncle Harry or Aunt Ginny.

She knew Lily was at least making _some_ effort to be a better, more decent person, but outbursts like the one she'd just had did very little at all to endear her to others and Roxy wasn't certain what would happen if she and Lily had another blow up. She mostly liked her cousin, even if a number of the things Lily did drove Roxy and everyone else crazy, but if Lily continued acting like this, then no one would want to be around her any more.

In the yard, Louis and James were tossing around a Quaffle, chatting happily to each other while they goofed around, oblivious to the meltdown that had occurred inside. Albus, ever the odd one, was spinning wildly around in circles, leaving Roxy to search for a logical reason why he would do such a thing, with the ground wet from a recent rainstorm and Al not even wearing a decent coat to cover himself.

"What's up with you, nutter?" Roxy called over to him, making Albus stop spinning and turn in her direction, a small smile on his face.

"I think it's going to rain again soon," Albus said, shooting a glance up at the clouds above. "Do you think it will rain soon, Roxy? It's probably a good thing we're eating inside. If it rained, we'd all be in quite a lot of trouble."

Overhearing his brother's words, James smirked in their direction. "No one cares about the rain, dumbass. You're the only one who gives a fuck."

In response, Albus waved his hands in the direction of his older brother, making a small scoffing noise. Roxy wondered if the Potter brothers knew how Lily felt about the soon to be addition to their family or if she kept those angry words to herself when they were around. That sort of thing would be just like her, to hide how she truly felt when around the people who were the source of the issue in the first place.

"Anyway," said Albus, walking over to Roxy and briefly patting her arm. "It isn't as though is always necessarily a bad thing. Too much rain can ruin a picnic or flood a house but too little rain would lead to droughts and severe dehydration on a particularly hot summer day." He smiled at her. "But that's not really what we need to talk about, to be honest. Would you like to go for a walk before Gran calls us in for dinner?"

Roxy nodded, following after him towards the orchard south of the Burrow. There was a stream not too far from the orchard, and as children, all of the cousins would hang out by the water for hours, cooling their feet or going for a swim to cool down. They had not come out here to just relax—or come at all really—since Victoire and Teddy got married and Dominique threw herself into the Thames almost eight years ago.

Albus paused, leaning against a tree, and let out a small sigh, craning his neck upwards. "You know what, Roxy?" He turned his head, eyes widened slightly. "Lily can see the future, right? And if she can see the future and Chloe says that the Faceless One will attack before your twentieth birthday, don't you think it would be smart to ask her if she can see anything that might possibly happen in the next four weeks?"

"'Her'? As in ask Lily? I—I—I guess doing that would make sense, but Al, have you talked to your sister lately? She's been in a right state for weeks, totally unhelpful, so she might not be willing to do anything for us at the moment."

He raised his eyebrows at Roxy. "Well, I'm sure that as Lily's _brother_ , she'd be more than willing to help out if I just as nicely. After all, I grew up with Lily. I, of all people, should be able to talk sensibly to her and get her to be a decent person for at least ten minutes. Just—I mean, it would be smart to—we should go back to the and ask her right now, shouldn't we? She would probably be agreeable to that, don't you think, just a quick discussion about something that will inevitably affect us all?"

Just then, there was a rustling from the entrance of the orchard and Lily herself came walking slowly through the trees, staring forlornly at them both as she halted uncertainly, her cheeks flushed and eyes ringed with red like she'd been crying.

"Oh, er, hi Lils, we were just talking about, uh, talking _to_ you. Is that one way to put it?" He looked at Roxy, who shrugged. "How are you doing, huh, little sister? I feel like we barely ever chat any more, you know, casually, so we should totally just have a nice talk about things like, um, you know future events that are going to affect us, probably?"

"You mean the Faceless One coming to murder us?" Lily asked curtly. At Roxy and Al's panicked expressions, she merely shrugged. "I already knew about it to begin with, but I could hear you guys on my way over. But before I tell you anything, I have just one question and you have to agree with what I ask or else I'll just leave without saying anything at all, understand?"

They both nodded.

"Okay, well, you've got to remember first and foremost that Seeing is different from forming prophecies. What I'm about to tell you is tenuous, it's fluid. As in, subject to change, got it So I may See one way that events could occur but that doesn't necessarily mean that things _will_ happen like I say and you have to be prepared, no matter what the outcome may be. And you can't blame me either because you guys asks me to tell you and I warned you about everything."

They nodded again.

Lily sighed. "Alright then, if you insist." Then, closing her eyes, she raised her hands up and breathed slowly through her nose. "He'll attack the day before Roxy's birthday—that's a fact, by the way, no matter the time line. He'll have an army of people he's turned to his side, including Trinh Itawa, Sergio McClane, and Elena Ianson. Plenty of people will die on both sides and it will be quite destructive—the Battle will start in Diagon Alley and it will be talked about for years. All three of us will be there, but I don't see any of us dying in any possible future. At least, I don't see that yet."

"Who, if anyone, _do_ you see dying?" Albus asked her softly, crossing his arms over his chest. He was nervous, as the idea of an actual, incredibly dangerous and deadly battle finally, truly occurring to him.

Opening her eyes, Lily fixed her gaze on her brother, a cold, empty expression on her face. "Meera. Brennan. Lindsey. Lots of people—more than fifty people. Their bodies lining the streets of Diagon Alley like they lined the hallways of Hogwarts over thirty years ago. There'll be blood and funerals for days afterwards and—" Lily sighed once more, shaking her head with a frightened, unsettled expression suddenly overcoming her. "I don't want to see it any more, Al, I don't want to see their dead bodies or the crying people or the blood. I hate seeing it every night until I wake up screaming and crying myself. I hate it."

Her brother reached out to pat her on the arm, giving Lily a worried look. "Lily, you're fine, it's okay." He rubbed her arm comfortingly. "J-just try to focus on other things you—I mean, maybe if you try to think about something other than the battle, then you won't have to see it all the time."

"Thomas is going to die, though! I can't just _not_ focus on the fact that I might lose the love of my life in a few weeks!"

Roxy and Albus shared confused glances. "Hold on just a second," Roxy replied in her calmest voice possible. "Who in the hell is Thomas and _how_ has he become the 'love of your life' when you've sworn for months that you're done with the whole dating field? I highly doubt that _you_ of all people could date anyone for any real length of time without telling someone."

The older girl grew crestfallen and pushed Albus' army away to instead fold her own arms over her chest and let out a loud sigh. "Okay," she admitted quietly. "Another one of the 'futures' I've seen leaves open a large possibility that I will start seeing a guy named Thomas Greyson. He's, uh, a bit older than me—"

"How much older than you?" Albus demanded, looking at her sternly, his brow furrowed.

She cringed slightly. "Uh, well he is about seven and a half years older than me, so..." Lily cringed again at the cross expression on her brother's face. "But he's a nice guy, despite the age gap and we'd have, like, three kids together and he'll treat me very nicely And—and I love him."

"You've never even _met_ him, Lily!" cried Albus, shaking his head wildly. "How can you decide that you love someone that you don't know yet? What if it turns out that he's actually a terrible person and you convince yourself that he's a decent guy because of a _possible_ future?"

"Uh, well, see, I don't think that's really an issue, actually, because I've already met Thomas and we've been dating for about two weeks now."

That made Albus turn red in the face; he scowled, hitting his fist at a tree. "You're _dating_ him, Lily? What the hell, when did you meet him? How long did you guys get to know each other before you agreed to go out on a date? Please tell me it was an actual length of time before you said yes so I don't have to strangle you."

"Okay, so that's another funny thing, see? I first met Thomas on the same day that we started going out. And, also, fun little tidbit that you should probably know is that in actuality, _I_ was the one who asked him out, not the other way around. So, um, yeah, that's—that's the story of how I met the man of my dreams, I guess."

"You only met him a few hours before you asked him out?" Roxy asked, not sure if she should be impressed or concerned about how quickly Lily was moving in this new relationship.

"I mean, he's attractive and smart. And I don't why it is that—or how it is—that I can see a future where I marry Thomas and have a happy life with him and at the same time see him die along with dozens of other people. Only one of those futures could possibly be true. I mean, he can't marry me if he's dead and if he marries me in the future it means he isn't going to die now, right?"

"Oh, well, I'm sure it'll all work out," Roxy tried to reassure her, though Lily shook her head despondently. "Maybe he won't die—like, we live in the future where he's perfectly safe and healthy and has nothing to do with the battle? Besides, why _would_ he get involved in the war anyway, yeah? So maybe it's all a big misunderstanding and you shouldn't stress yourself over it."

"And what? All those other people I see who die over and over again are going to magically survive just because I pretend like nothing will happen to them?"  
"No, but I am saying that stressing yourself out about everything isn't going to change things so what's the point in getting so freaked out about it when you _know_ it's not your fault and you aren't in control of anything that may or may not possibly happen?"

"I don't want them to die. I know they may not because it's not set in stone, but are we really going to risk it and potentially let people die?" Lily asked, her voice cracked and tears flooding her eyes. "Do we really have nothing to do—nothing at all until the Faceless One attacks us? Do—is there really not a single bloody thing we could do?"

Uncertain, Roxy shrugged. "I mean, we don't have any idea where he or any of the others actually are so it's not as though there is an option to chase them down to stop them before anything can happen. Besides that, they're more powerful than only the three of us even if we were team up. So, yeah, to be totally realistic, unless your powers of seeing the future can tell us where to find Trinh, then we'll simply just have to wait until the come to us."

Lily had stopped sniffling and now exchanged a look with her brother, the two of them simultaneously rolling their eyes at one another.

"You _do_ realise that goes entirely against our moral codes as both Potter-Weasleys and as Gryffindors? The idea of just backing down because we currently don't know where to take the fight is totally against our nature, not to mention that we could grab the entirety of the Circle and be even stronger as a group."

She raised her eyebrows at the siblings. "Right, but you two seem to forget that I wasn't a Gryffindor in school, I was a Slytherin, so rushing into things without any plan or thought goes against _my_ personal belief system. It would be reckless and dangerous and I would never in a million years make such a ridiculously thoughtless maneouvre."

"Coward," Lily huffed but smiled weakly at Roxy. "Come on, then. I think Gran's about ready to eat and I'd rather not have her sending an entire search team after us because we took too long coming back."

The other two nodded and followed after Lily; behind the trio, a bucket used for storing apples tipped onto its side as though someone had run into it, but none of them noticed.

* * *

After everyone had sat down and Grandmum Molly passed around the string of dishes at least once, the twenty-five adults—plus one infant—began to eat though there was an obvious underlying tension as the Weasley family waited for the usual tradition of weekly updated to begin. What news would be shared today—and how much of it was bad?

And there was quite a lot to be updated on—Roxy had yet to tell anyone she was continuing her internship for another year, Aunt Hermione still needed to update the family on her cancer treatment, and Lucy was keeping oddly quiet about the older blond man sitting by her side, to name a few things.

"So Lucy," began Grandmum Molly, the first to break the silence. "You've yet to introduce us to this fine young gentleman with you tonight. You don't want to seem rude in front of your guest, now do you?"

Lucy shrugged but indicated the man. "This is Philip Germaine, my boyfriend. We've been dating for almost five months now and we made the decision that it was time for him to meet everyone. We would have done his 'official' introduction at the party, but I figured that wasn't really the right time since the event wasn't about me."

"Now, is _Philip_ the reason you moved back out of the Burrow so quickly?" Grandmum asked, raising her eyebrows as she looked Philip over, scrutinising him carefully. She was probably now mentally picking him apart, determining whether or not she found him to be worthy of her granddaughter.

"Yeah." Lucy was oblivious to the furious look on her father's face. "We figured it'd be easier to just live together so that we could see each other all the time instead of owling back and forth. Plus, Philip knows a lot about raising children, so he really helps with Ruby." She gave her boyfriend an admiring smile.

"My siblings are all fourteen to twenty years younger than me," Philip explained.

Uncle Percy leant forward, ignoring his food in favour of glaring at his younger daughter's boyfriend. "Twenty years younger, huh? So that would that your youngest sibling is how old, exactly? Five? Six years old?" It was obvious what he was hinting at—tact had never been Uncle Percy's strong point.

"Oh." Philip turned to frown at Lucy, who gave him a benign shrug and waved her hand in a 'keep going' motion. "Well, in the name of being honest, actually my little brother Norris is thirteen." Uncle Percy opened his mouth to say something, but Philip raised his hands defensively. "I understand, sir, if you're upset by the rather sizeable age gap between your daughter and I, but I can assure you that Lucy and I truly do love each other and we talked at length about it before choosing to make our relationship official. Lucy told me that you're a very proud person and I promise, sir—Mr Weasley—that I intend to make you proud of my relationship with Lucy, if you have no protests against its continuation."

"And I thought people would lose their minds about me being with Thomas!" said Lily under her breath.

Finding no real argument, and seeing how tightly Lucy held onto her boyfriend's arm, Uncle Percy merely sighed deeply and nodded. "But you'll ask me first before choosing to get married, won't you, boy?" he asked sharply, to which Philip assured him that would absolutely be the case when he and Lucy were ready for marriage.

"But that will be several years from now, of course," added Lucy.

"I got invited to start my second year at Henrik's!" Roxy said loudly, sensing that the conversation was about to hit an awkward silence. She blushed slightly when everyone turned to look at her, but pressed forward. Even if work was driving her crazy, Roxy was still really proud of herself. "Yeah I got the letter earlier this week. They said I would get a ten galleon an hour raise, which is really exciting and I'm allowed to start working on my own potions whenever I have any free time."

"Which will be never," Rose joked, leaning across the table to high-five Roxy. "But congratulations. That's really awesome, Rox."

The other Weasleys took turns congratulating her, making Roxy blush further still from all the attention. Lucy quietly explained to Philip, to which he gaped at Roxy in shock, mumbling, "I didn't realise she was old enough to have a job like that. I thought she was just out of Hogwarts or something. She's so small, I thought she was much younger."

"I'm almost twenty," Roxy said loudly, directing her comment towards the blond. "I'm just really small for my age. But at least twenty years from now, I can still probably pass for someone half my age while everyone else will look ridiculously old."

That made a few people laugh and Roxy smirked, thinking about how her almost fifty-two year old mother could pass for Roxy's older sister.

Uncle Percy redirected the conversation back to his favourite topic of discussion—himself—reminding all of them that his campaign for Minister had begun and since Kingsley Shacklebolt was no longer trying to keep his seat of over thirty years, they would all be wise to begin promoting Percy at their workplaces and amongst friends."

"Though I don't doubt I'll easily nab the position—after all, I've been Kingsley's number two for eighteen years and my only other opponents so far are Samuel Blishwick and Alyce Malfoy—an idiot and a Malfoy, who, regardless of what the family may claim, are certainly not well-loved by the wizarding public, even now."

Roxy rolled her eyes at the smug look on her uncle's face. Though he was family, she didn't really agree that he was best for the job of Minister—not that she'd ever say such a thing out loud where Percy and Grandmum could hear it. But Uncle Percy had been holding off his own run for Minister for years, insisting that he didn't want to run against his good friend even though everyone knew the real reason was because he could never compare to the likes of Kingsley Shacklebolt.

Uncle Percy was arrogant and full of himself, always talking like he was the greatest thing ever though Roxy had heard several times from her dad back in the day—though only when he got himself worked up into a drunken rant—that Uncle Percy had run away and turned against his family during the war.

She wondered if the general wizarding public remembered or even knew about that. Perhaps his run for Minister wouldn't be as easy as he thought if that new were to somehow get out. Not, of course, that she'd ever really release that little fact just to combat her personal dislike of her uncle. He was still family and no matter what, family always looked out for each other. Even _she_ wasn't Slytherin enough for that.

Though maybe just the right word or two to Jo—who wasn't a Weasley and _was_ Slytherin enough—would allow that knowledge to reach the public without Roxy having to feel guilty about it. After all, it was more than Uncle Percy deserved.

Aunt Hermione briefly mentioned that she would be switching to strictly muggle methods to treat her cancer, though declined to elaborate despite everyone else urging her to, trying to convince Hermione that they wanted to be there for her and to help her along every step of the way. Aunt Hermione only shook her head and continued eating slowly, her hands shaking with every small bite that she took.

Then it was James and Caroline who stood up, all big smiles and nervously speaking over each other as they formally announced their engagement, even though the whole family already knew all about it.

Caroline held out her ring, letting everyone make appreciative noises over it before turning to look at James lovingly, the two of them recounting the story of how James had proposed to her right outside her flat, bent down on one knee in the dark, with only the light of the moon illuminating his face as he asked for her hand.

Roxy, out of the corner of her eye, noticed the furious expression on Peter's face and the way that Molly kept a steady hand on his arm to keep her boyfriend from saying anything.

Molly and Peter had been dating for nearly thirteen years at this point—he had sat through Victoire and Teddy's wedding, Rose and Hannai's wedding, and Albus and Scorpius' wedding.

Roxy wasn't confident that he would be willing to sit through a whole wedding process all over again without putting some sort of ultimatum on Molly. And Roxy _definitely_ didn't think that Molly wouldn't just break up with him on the spot rather than let anyone pressure her into getting married before she was ready.

But Peter said nothing and nobody else appeared to have picked up on his angry demeanour besides Roxy and Molly, as they were all too busy congratulating the newly engaged couple sitting at the other end of the table.

"Oh, yeah," Louis recalled when asked where Victoire and her family were. "Vic and Teddy took a holiday and I think they left the kids with her friend, Alicia. Apparently, she's taking Remy to school and all that since Marcus, or whatever that boy's name is, is also old enough for primary school and it's convenient."

"Would this be the Alicia that married your great-nephew Jared?" Grandmum Molly asked Granddad, who frowned slightly, trying to keep track of his older brother's extensive brood, which was even bigger than his own. "You remember, don't you, Arthur? Douglas' second son, married that pretty blonde almost ten years ago?"

Granddad nodded, murmuring, "Oh, yes, _that_ wedding," though it was obvious he had absolutely no recollection of what his wife was talking about.

They resumed eating peacefully now that all of the most important announcements had been discussed. Grandmum Molly continued pushing Granddad Arthur about his various family members while Molly and Peter argued quietly to themselves about marriage. Uncle Percy grumbled to his wife about not liking the idea of Lucy having a boyfriend, especially one she was already living with while Aunt Audrey assured him that Lucy was an adult who could make her own decisions now without Percy hanging over her all the time.

"Not that he ever really did anything like that until I started dating Ryan," muttered Lucy, who was sitting to the left of Roxy. She didn't appear to be talking to anyone in particular so Roxy didn't respond. "Before that, he—they both, really—left Molly and me to our own devices for most of our childhood and time in school."

Uncle Harry, Roxy noticed, stayed quiet about everything concerning Project Starkid. She hadn't heard anything about his potential trial since they first rescued the kids and she really didn't want to see her favourite uncle dragged to court to defend himself over something that shouldn't even need to be argued about.

Finally, once dinner had finished and everything was cleaned and put away, Grandmum and Granddad went around the room giving everyone their usual good-bye hug and reminded them to come back the following Sunday for more good food and an enjoyable time together as a family, as though they had all forgotten.

Mum waved goof-bye to Roxy before heading out to the Apparition site. "Don't forget to write to Chloe. She'll appreciate hearing from her family in this first year." Then Mum left and Roxy was on her own.

She didn't really feel like going home just yet but she also knew if she hung around for too long, Grandmum would start talking to Roxy about spending the night or possibly even several nights here at the Burrow—and as much as she loved her grandparents, she didn't much want to sleep anywhere but her own bed that night.

Roxy headed outside, bracing herself against a sudden chill. Glad she'd decided to wear her robes today, Roxy stuffed her hands into her pockets and kept walking, feeling her cheeks burn and eyes begin to water. Hopefully there was tea at home.

"Hey, Roxy," Lily called out to her before she could Apparate away. Roxy turned to look at her cousin, eyebrows raised. "I think the Circle needs to meet so that we can prepare for the battle. If we can't prevent it, we're going to at least be ready."


	59. The last Circle meeting

August Batts, at twelve years old, could not recall what his life had been like before he was taken in by Mr McClane and the rest of the Project Starkid team. He'd been told many times that his old life was far worse, with a mum who drank 'bad things' all the time and a dad who'd run off before August was even born.

As far as he was concerned, Mr McClane was his father and Miss Maggie was his mum. Trinh was his big sister, who loved him and would never leave him. That was why she trusted him more than anyone else because August had proven himself to be wholly loyal to her and no one else, unwilling to suddenly jump ship if leadership changed one day and left someone other than Trinh in charge. Even then, he would fight until she came back; after all, she was their leader and no one could ever replace her.

That was the _rule_.

It was simply how life worked and how life would always work. Letting Trinh be in charge was the only way that the world could ever improve and August couldn't understand why no one else had figured that out yet when it was so obvious to him that Trinh was the smartest, strongest person around. She was their future, their rescuer, and it made him annoyed that nobody else had yet figured that out, especially those who weren't members of Starkid, whom August had overheard mocking Trinh when they thought nobody else was around to catch them talking bad about their leader.

But August shook it off, knowing that he had been given a mission to follow through regardless of how he might feel.

So when Trinh told him that they were going to live with Sergio for a while, he agreed without a thought. When she told him to stand outside of her room as a sentry while she and Sergio talked about battle plans, August stayed alert even when the noises from inside her room didn't sound like battle plans. And when Trinh told August that he would go with Elena to free all of their siblings from prison, he jumped up in excitement and asked her when she wanted them to head out.

Now there were more than sixty people living in a space that wasn't really meant to hold _any_ people for a length of time. Sergio, grumbling the whole time, had paid for a year's rent on a building in the middle of this strange town called Diagon Alley.

And because he was Trinh's right-hand man, August was in charge of maintaining this army as well as any new members that joined between now and their assault on the 'normies'. It was up to him to assign everyone sleeping quarters, get enough food to feed them all, and keep any fights from breaking out. Though stressful, August beamed with pride, knowing that he'd only been entrusted with this job because of how loyal he was.

Elena, after finishing their mission of breaking out their comrades from the strange rocky prison, did not appreciate being put on what she called 'babysitting duty', but Sergio only had to give her a strong, stern look before she sulkily agreed to move into the new building.

"What are you doing, August?" she asked, looking over his shoulder. They had been here for almost four days now and only an hour ago, Trinh had stopped by to drop off three new recruits, all enticed by the strange leader they worked for that August and Elena secretly referred to as Khiro.

"Working out plans of where to fit everyone," he replied seriously, showing the layout of their temporary home. "I know Trinh said we won't have to stay her too much longer but if she keeps bringing in new people like this, we'll run out of space. Also, Andreo has tried to set stuff on fire half a dozen times now, which is understandably pissing people off, and no matter how much food is brought in, there's simply not enough to efficiently feed everyone here."

She scrutinised him carefully, taking in August's small frame and messy brown hair. He was little more than a child, really, not much older than she'd been when Project Starkid sent her away to work as a spy.

"You know, August, I'm sure it'd be fine if you took a break and rested for a little while. No one would blame you if you handed the workload off to someone else for a few hours so that you can take a breather—you know, have a bite to eat or take a shower, perhaps?"

August squinted up at her then shook his head. "No, Trinh has entrusted me to be in charge of all of this and that means I can't stop everything is perfect. I won't be the reason why we fail—I _can't_ be the reason why we fail, not that we could ever fail, considering that Trinh is in charge of leading us and we're stronger than any other humans in the history of mankind. But I can't fall behind on my duties no matter what."

"August—" Elena reached out to pat him reassuringly on the shoulder noticing how jumpy and thin the youth was. "If you work yourself to death then that'll be even worse. Besides, I'm sure Trinh is proud of everything you've done so far. Please, take a break."

Elena didn't really remember Trinh that well; she was four years older than Elena and belonged to the group of children who held themselves loftily above everyone else, the _actual_ children of those running the project, while Elena and others had merely been unwanted and cast off, long forgotten by their birth families, most of whom probably didn't even remember or care about the child they had discarded so easily.

But she could tell that August was obsessed with Trinh to the point that he was her endlessly loyal servant, doing whatever it was she asked of him, no matter how impractical the order. So, regardless of Elena's personal feelings on their 'great leader', she would say nothing negative about the older girl if only to spare young August's feelings.

The boy coughed but waved his hands in her direction, shaking his head emphatically when she asked if he wanted a drink of water. He was apparently insistent on working himself to the brink of death just to make Trinh happy.

It made Elena think of foolish Isaac Baumann, who'd jumped in front of Harry Potter to save his light—and now Isaac was a burnt husk of nothing, no doubt buried and in the process of being forgotten about by this point, one more Auror to fall in the line of duty.

She didn't want August to end up the same way just because Trinh Itawa asked him to fight until his final breath.

* * *

 _The Daily Prophet_

 _16 September 2029_

 _Mass breakout at Azkaban! Public demands answers!_

 _By Cara Kinsington_

Last night, more than thirty people—all members of the highly secretive institution known only as 'Project Starkid'—broke out of Azkaban, helped by unknown outsiders. Many will recall back in 1996, a similar outbreak of followers of the infamous Dark Lord Voldemort as well as a similar outbreak the following year involving even more confirmed members of his dark army. As of yet, this is currently the largest outbreak to date, made even more unusual by the youth of many of these escaped members.

Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt confirmed early this morning that thirty-seven prisoners have escaped and that another fourteen under-age members of Starkid being held at St Mungo's all disappeared around ten pm last night and that their whereabouts—as well as the whereabouts or identities of their assistance—is currently unknown.

"I have informed the muggle Prime Minister, of course, and we are doing whatever is necessary to bring these people back in time for their trial," said Minister Shacklebolt during his press release this morning. "But they are uniquely skilled and very difficult to control; I am working very closely with Head Auror Potter to double the number of agents we have searching for the escapees and I personally guarantee that we will find them."

Minister Shacklebolt declined to elaborate on his description of 'uniquely skilled' and would give no further comment.

The escapees were not official prisoners of Azkaban and were being kept separate from the rest of the prisoners until their official trial, though it is currently unconfirmed as to whether or not _they_ would have even been the ones facing conviction.

Phuong Itawa, of the Wizengamot, claims that it was "never meant to be these poor children in jail or on the pulpit. They were meant to be witnesses against Harry James Potter for his crimes against this project and against the people! He is the only one deserving of punishment. We simply want to recover this group of individuals in order to move forward with the case against Mr Potter."

If you notice any suspicious activity or have any knowledge of the whereabouts of any of these Azkaban escapees, please contact the Aurors' office at the Ministry. Though they are not being treated as hostile entities, you are warned to not approach them under any circumstances.

 _This is Cara Kinsington, third-generation legacy Daily Prophet reporter, wishing you a pleasant week._

* * *

"What the fuck!" Lily yelled, kicking the wall of Albus and Scorpius' flat. She'd gone red in the face after Meera finished reading the most recent article concerning the mass outbreak last week. "This isn't fucking fair! I fucking hate the media, I hate _The Prophet_ , and I hate stupid Cara Kinsington!" She screamed and kicked the wall again.

 _The Daily Prophet_ , now six days into their reports about Project Starkid, were now heavily insinuating that Harry Potter had been the one to release all those people and hide them away somewhere—or possibly even have them deported or murders—so that they could not speak out against him in court.

Anyone with half a brain knew that it was all a load of shite drummed up by _The Prophet_ to increases sales, but that didn't mean that Lily was thinking rationally enough at the moment to recognise that most of the public would disregard such nonsense about their 'golden boy saviour' as absolutely malarkey and hearsay. No one really believed he would do anything like that.

"This is absolute bullcrap!" Lily said loudly, but before she could kick the wall a third time, Albus grabbed her shirt and dragged his little sister back to where she'd been sitting earlier.

"Sit," he told her like she was a trained dog. "Kick my wall again and _I'll_ kick your arse, you petulant little fiend." He turned to address the rest of them. "Okay, so besides further proving that _The Prophet_ is run by idiots and nutters, what do we know?"

Roxy raised her hand, scowling when a few other people tittered at the action; she wasn't sure why, but Albus always reminded her of a professor and it was hard to not treat him like one, especially when he behaved so seriously. "We know that Trinh has an army of at least forty people and that they're going to attack the general wizarding populace five days from now and that quite a number of people—including, potentially, some in present company—will die in the ensuing battle no matter what we try to do."

Albus nodded, unperturbed by the nervous or even downright frightened looks of those around him. "That is exactly right, Rox. So the next big question is, who wants to die five days from now? Raise your hand if you do."

They all glanced around at each other, uncertain as to what Albus meant. Who wanted to die _ever_ , let alone in five days? Had he lost his mind? What in the hell was Albus Potter blithering on about? Obviously, they didn't want to die—who would ask something so ridiculous?  
"Exactly." Albus nodded grimly at them, stretching out his arms. "Nobody _wants_ to die in five year's time, let alone in five days. But as hard as we try, for some of the people in this room, that is an inevitable future. Remember, I've said this before, that death was a given and to think anything else is to delude yourself. And I'm so sorry to those who will not survive—I will mourn you in the same way that I hope you will mourn me if I am one of those people who do not survive. We are fighting for a cause that is greater than any one of us because this is a fight for humanity. Never forget that, no matter what happens, that everything we do, every life lost, every injury sustained, every spell cast, is going to help those who continue so that they can finish what we started. Think of it less as giving into death and more as embracing a brighter tomorrow for the generations that are yet to come. Would you rather tell the story of how you ran away when faced with a threat or would you have all of your friends and family tell the story of how you fought for the future of humanity? I know most of us here are not Gryffindors, but I personally have never believed that only a Gryffindor can be brave. We are all fearless, we are all bold, and we will all give everything we have to defeat the Faceless One and his army in five days' time."

The rest of the Circle applauded him, even the ones who thought Albus was completely barking mad; he could have quite the way with words sometimes.

* * *

August sat at the table, listening to Trinh and Sergio argue back and forth as they always did. This was probably his least favourite part of being in Trinh's inner circle, having to sit through meetings with a bunch of older people who all thought that they were the final say on how the army would move forward.

Khiro chose to sit back and let the humans debate amongst themselves, occasionally chuckling when someone said something found particularly amusing or preposterously optimistic. August thought that Khiro was smirking at them, even if he didn't technically have a mouth—it was obviously by the way his jaw was so tightly drawn back.

Everyone seemed to have forgotten that the twelve year old was still there as they began swearing and insinuating rather disgusting things about each other's mothers, which didn't make sense to August since, for a majority of the people in Sergio's kitchen, 'Mum' was Mrs Itawa or Miss Maggie, who were both nice, pretty people who didn't deserve the insults they were being given by the people here.

Elena leant over, whispering to August, "Just ignore them. Everyone one of these idiots is only half as mature as you are, at best. You don't even stand on the same level as the rest of them because of how mature and adult-like you are. To be totally honest, I'm actually quite jealous of what a grown up you've turned out to be." She did her best to keep the pity out of her words.

He shrugged. "Trinh's the adult here," he replied quietly. "She's so clever and wise—we could get a million things done much faster if everyone would stop bickering and listen to what she says."

Looking the boy over to make sure he wasn't joking, Elena shook her head at how foolish the boy truly was. He honestly did worship the very ground that Trinh walked on, as preposterous as that was. When was August going to finally grow a spine and realise that he could do so much more if he stopped letting Trinh control every single thing he did?

"Merlin's flamin' beard!" cried Knightley Adais, glaring at Trinh. "Whoever put a bloody woman like you in charge was o' their bleedin' head, they were. You're completely off your rocker, little lady, swaggerin' 'bout like you own the joint."

He wasn't from Starkid; he didn't understand how powerful Trinh truly was or how many people she had at her command if she only said the word.

August didn't like him on the principle that he was one of Khiro's hired men, which meant that Trinh didn't like him—and anyone Trinh hated, August hated. She didn't trust people with wands, but especially not people whose wand came with a price, their loyalty easily sold for the difference of only a few galleons. People like Adais weren't truly fighting because they believed in a greater tomorrow, they were fighting because they people in getting paid and his callousness about that fact drove Trinh mad.

"I will have you know, Mr Adais, that I was placed in charge after extensive testing that determined that I was the most qualified for the position of leading our army to victory. If you do not agree with my methods then you may leave. There will be no love lost by your departure, I can assure you of that much."

Under his breath, Sergio muttered, "You were actually picked as _second_ most qualified but I left after I realised how preposterous the whole program is."

Adais smirked, raising a singular eyebrow at Trinh, who silently glared at him in response. "You know, Mr McClane here is the one who pays me, so I think I'll be listenin' to whatever _Mr Most Qualified_ tells me to do instead. You can you back to baby-sittin' your little bastard o' a brat." He nodded at August, laughing at the confused expression on the naive boy's face.

"I am in charge here!" Trinh insisted, slamming her fist down on the table as she stared intently at Adais. Smoke curled from between her closed fingers, making the hired man eye her warily. "Sergio may pay your 'salary', you insolent little worm, but I am the one who is supplying the work for which you are paid. If need be, I could kill you in less than minute and have you replaced within two. I have less than no respect for idiots such as yourself and you would be wise to avoid incurring my wrath ever again."

"What do you think you're gonna do if I don't agree?" Adais asked, still watching Trinh carefully. "What can you really do t' hurt me, eh?"

She smirked, getting up from her seat to walk around the table where Adais was sitting. The man gulped, realising too late the mistake he had made. He watched in terror as she paused right in front of him, uncurling her right hand; then, reaching out, she lightly stroked his face, causing tendrils of smoke to float up and lightly burnt the side of Adais' face so that it turned from white to pink to red, making him grimace.

"I could burn you as easily as tinder wood," Trinh told him in a throaty voice, grinning at him like a cat would smile at a trapped mouse. "I've burnt men before—children, too, I don't really mind. Their screams excite me. How loudly can you scream, Mr Adais?"

The man whimpered; her hand was still warming his face but now the heat was reaching the point of almost being unbearable. He wanted to scream, but holding Trinh's gaze, Knightley Adais found himself unable to make any noise louder tha a pathetic, snivelling whimper.

Trinh laughed just as the smell of cooked flesh began to fill Sergio's flat. She dropped her hand from Adais' face and returned to her own seat, flashing him a cold smirk. No one dared speak against her.

Khiro chuckled darkly, amusing by the antics of his silly little humans.

* * *

"How do you know that they'll attack us in five days' time?" asked Lindsey, looking from Albus to Victoria, wondering who here would be dead within a week from today. It was a painful thought, as she'd grown to enjoy the company of many here.

Lily was the one to offer a response, though she looked tense and exhausted, even just speaking. "I've seen the battle happen over and over in my dreams—and, no, I can't confirm who will die and who live because those details are constantly changing. But I do always check the date and it is always the twenty-seventh of September. That is an unchangeable fact. I don't know why, but regardless of what happens, the Faceless One and Trinh Itawa always choose to attack on the same day, in the morning."

Lindsey nodded uncertainly, discomforted by the knowledge that her future was in the hands of a daemon and a psychopath. That was usually not a good recipe for having high chances of survival, especially the stories she'd heard about Trinh Itawa being willing to burn people while they were still alive and laugh whilst doing so.

"I know it isn't ideal and there are still a lot of unknown factors but at least we can plan something out rather than waiting for them to strike first." Albus nodded, almost as if to himself, and began pacing. "I say that the ideal way of using what we know is to place people throughout Diagon Alley on the twenty-seventh so that we can start fighting back the second they show up. Obviously, there's no way of knowing where it will all start, but if we place enough people all around, that'll take away some of the surprise."

"And where do you intend on finding enough people to have agents throughout all of Diagon Alley?" asked Brennan. "There are only twenty of us."

Roxy raised her hands again and cleared her throat. "Yeah, so there are about one hundred and twenty-six people that were rescued from Project Starkid and roughly seventy-one of those are what we have deemed to be of fighting age, which is eleven to thirty-nine years old. Albus wanted to raise the minimum age to seventeen, but the younger students have all proven themselves to be capable of fighting, no matter what Al thinks."

"I'm worried that they aren't mentally prepared for all of it!" Albus insisted.

"Yes, but that discounts the years of mental trauma they've already suffered through at the hands of Project Starkid. Those who are currently at Hogwarts will be able to sneak away the night before so that they can help. Obviously, through Chloe, I have contacted them all to see who would be willing to help and the majority were more than eager to bring down their old captors. The rest of our numbers are being filled out by Aurors and people who are being entrusted to fight for what they know to be right."

"This is really happening, isn't it?" mumbled Schuyler, frowning. She thought of her own sixteen year old sister, trying to imagine the girl picking up her wand to battle homework, let alone an entire army led by a daemon that wanted them all dead. "All of this is actually _real_. It didn't feel real—it _doesn't_ feel real." She looked up, face flushed. "But we're doing this. We're going to fight the Faceless One."

There was a low murmuring around the room as it sunk in for the rest of them that Schuyler was right, as much as they might want to pretend otherwise, life as they knew it would be totally different this time next week.

* * *

"When do we want to move out?" Sergio asked, looking between the Faceless One and Trinh for an answer. After her outburst earlier he wasn't sure who to show deference to. The daemon terrified him beyond reason but the more time he spent in Trinh's presence, the more he was reminded of why she used to play such a heavy part in his nightmares as a boy.

"Soon," Trinh said insistently, looking around the table for any more naysayers; there were none to be found. "If we let the soldiers grow too complacent, they will want to leave. And if we do not show ourselves to be a formidable foe quickly, our enemies will forget that there were ever a threat to begin with. I say we move out by the end of the month."

The Faceless One raised one hand slowly to get their attention, turning his head slowly so that it felt like he was somehow looking at each and every one of them. "A date has been set already, eager humans. Twenty-seventh of September—you, Itawa, will have your battle by the end of the month but it will be by _my_ standard, as always. This is the perfect date on which to make our first public appearance, a date decided long before you were ever born. Twenty-seventh, the day that we shall show the world that we mean business."

"May I ask why that day of all days?" Sergio craned his neck, watching the daemon carefully in case he had annoyed it.

"No," the daemon replied, his voice turning cold as he focused all of his attention on the male. "I have you written down as an intelligent man, Sergio McClane. Do not disappoint me by making foolish mistakes like questioning the importance of days to a daemon. I can rewrite your entire history to ensure your death—do not make an enemy out of me."

Sergio's cheeks went pink, but he nodded, doing his best to ignore the sounds of Trinh's sniggering. He glared at her but she merely smirked and flipped him off in response, looking happy that he'd been told off.

A few seats down, Elena rolled her eyes at their childish behaviour. Were these really the people who were promised to lead Starkid to victory? At this point, considering their behaviour, she wouldn't even trust them to order her a meal properly.

How did August look up to Trinh when it was so obvious to Elena that Trinh was little more than a petty child who pushed people around and used her powers against 'normies' for her own amusement. But he was young and besotted; perhaps love truly _did_ blind people to all the faults of their source of adoration.

The boy, as though aware he was thought about despite the mental shields that Elena had up squirmed in his seat and turned to face her, his eyes wide and his face flushed. "I don't know if we're going to be ready in only five days," he whispered to her nervously. "I don't know if _I'll_ be ready in only five days. What if I mess everything up and we lose?"

"August!" Trinh snapped, glaring at him. Apparently, she had heard him even over her own conversation. "Honestly, you are such a child sometimes. As long as you do what I say, there is no possibility of failure—I simply will not allow such a thing to happen. So stop panicking as though you were a little boy and start acting like an adult. There is no crying on the battlefield, do you understand me?"

Though August nodded forlornly, Elena felt her fists ball up in frustration. How could Trinh say to a _child_ that they needed to stop behaving like a child? Of course August would be afraid of failures when people like her put so much pressure on him to succeed. But Trinh never did care about anyone who wasn't herself, even her most faithful follower.

* * *

"Okay," Aniya said while scooping a forkful of noodles into her mouth. "So we've got Chloe, Nonny, Brenton, Clarke, and Shia staying the night with us. I've pulled all the couches out—they're muggle things that can turn into beds, did you know—and I think we have enough blankets and pillows for everyone at this point."

It was the twenty-sixth now, four days after the meeting and the evening before they were going to head out, spreading through Diagon Alley to keep track of any attacks by Starkid. Five Hogwarts students, including her little sister Chloe, would be spending the night in the sitting room, while Lily, who didn't live anywhere near Diagon Alley, was sleeping on the floor of Roxy's room for the night, much to her displeasure.

They were all entirely full of nerves as evidenced by the paleness of their faces and the fact that most of their meals remained largely untouched.

Only Aniya had been able to push past her churning stomach to enjoy the spaghetti that she had prepared for them all. She was nearly done with her entire meal, with a bright red ring of sauce around her mouth as she ate bite after bite.

Even the normally stoic and untouchable Jo had her head in her hands, looking queasy as they discussed what would happen tomorrow. She shook her head any time that someone asked if she needed help, but Jo had already rushed off several times to go throw up in the bathroom. She appeared to be on the verge of a panic attack.

It was almost nine at night and Roxy could see the stress and worry of everyone around her. The youngest of the Hogwarts students that was staying over, Clarke, was thirteen, though she knew that that other people had several eleven and twelve year olds staying with them. She was beginning to have second thoughts about potentially sending all of these children to their deaths, but it was too late to stop now. There was a battle on their doorsteps whether she liked it or not.

"I think I'm going to bed now," Roxy said, standing up and noisily collecting her dishes to combat the stifling silence. If she didn't leave right at that very moment, Roxy told herself, then she too would throw up, just like Jo. "I'll see all the rest of you in the morning. Good-night."

* * *

When she woke up the morning, everything was totally different.


	60. Preparing for battle

Breakfast consisted of silence and nervous looks. Just like the night before, no one really felt up to eating as their stomachs were far too busy twisting themselves into knots for anyone to think of food. Even Aniya had no appetite this morning as she slowly took sips of tea and nervously jiggled her foot.

"Albus wants us in place by eight," Roxy said just to break the silence. The others already knew what was expected of them—at least as much as they _could_ know. But Roxy could feel the tension beginning to swallow her up and she just wanted to get rid of the unease that had begun to settle into her bones.

"How many of us are there?" asked Brenton, trying to sound brave despite the paleness of his face. "How many people are going to be at each station?"

She clutched her cup a little tighter, hoping desperately that her voice would not crack as she explained. "There should be about one hundred and fifty of us in total, with roughly ten at each station. The nine of us are in Group Three, along with Tilly, who will be joining us at eight. We'll be located on the top of this block of flats and when the signal is sounded, we'll move onto the next meeting point and get further instructions there. It's important that nobody here loses focus because we don't know precisely when or from where the enemy will come."

"Why is Longbottom with us?" asked Jo, pretending to be cross. She was actually too anxious to really care if Tilly was in her group, but it was easier to pretend like she was above it all than admit to feeling afraid.

Roxy rolled her eyes. "You know I didn't assign the groups, Jo. Besides, Tilly isn't that bad of a dueller. We're lucky to have her."

"Fine, but if she starts any crap with me, I'm not going to be mature enough to not hit her. I'm so tired of her smug face and superior attitude about everything."

"I don't really care what you do, Jo, but please focus on the fact that we're about to start a _war_." Roxy eyed her friend sharply, noting that she at least had the decency to look embarrassed about her rather immature outburst.

Aniya finally stopped pretending to drink her tea, turning slowly to Roxy. "Do you think we should head out a little early? I know he said we didn't have to be in place until eight, but it's not as though we're getting anything done by just sitting here." She ran her finger around the edge of her cup. "I don't like not doing anything, not when I'm so antsy like this."

A glance around the room revealed similar sentiments; nobody wanted to merely wait around until it was time to go. There was simply far too much anxiety and fear filling the kitchen.

"Okay." Roxy nodded firmly, feeling her stomach churn like it used to when she was at Hogwarts and had to present a project. Though this was far more serious than a bad grade—this was her life. But she breathed deeply and nodded once more. "Let's head out."

* * *

Group Three stepped outside on trembling legs, eyes scanning their surroundings with flittering movements as though expecting the enemy to appear out of thin air and charge at the cluster of already on edge people.

They were beginning to realise that ten—nine for now—people were hardly enough to do anything, let alone stop an entire army in their tracks. Even with members of Starkid amongst their numbers, there was no guarantee that they would even be able to make a dent in an army that would also be fuelled by Starkid, along with those loyal to the daemon, no doubt all filled with insatiable bloodlust and an eagerness to destroy.

Roxy led them around the back of the block of flats to where the fire escapes were located. Shia squeaked at the sight of the rickety ladder that they would have to climb to get onto the roof and backed away quickly.

"I can't climb that," she whimpered, shaking her head. "I can't go up there, it's way too high. I'll fall off and die, please don't make me go up there, I'm begging you, I can't go up there."

Jo and Roxy shared a look, rolling their eyes at each other. They were about to potentially sacrifice their lives and this little kid was freaking out about going up a ladder? Was she actually being serious? Far worse things would happen this morning—what sort of priorities were these, that joining a war was fine, but climbing a ladder was unbearable?

But Aniya, ever the Hufflepuff, put her hands on Shia's arms, unable to reach the girl's shoulders. "Shia, I know you're scared—and not just about the ladder. You're afraid to go up on that roof because you're worried that if you go up there, you may never come back down. But that's the same for all of us." She took one hand off of the girl to wave it around at their group. "Any of us could die today and that terrifies every single person here. You're not a Gryffindor, are you, Shia?"

"N-no," the girl whimpered, sniffling. "I'm a Hufflepuff."

"And I'm sure by now that you've heard about how Hufflepuffs are a bunch of losers, that they're wusses and pansies who never defend themselves. Well, guess what, Shia? _I'm_ a Hufflepuff." She nodded at the brunette's shocked expression and smiled gently at her. "Yes, it's true, I'm a Hufflepuff— _and_ I'm just as brave as any Gryffindor could ever be because the woman who founded our house, Helga Hufflepuff, took in all sorts of people. You can be brave and be a Hufflepuff, you can be smart and be a Hufflepuff, you can be cunning and be a Hufflepuff. She didn't—and I don't—believe that people can only ever be one thing. So let me ask you, Shia, can you be brave like a Hufflepuff and go up there?"

Shia nodded then rushed forward to grab the lowest rungs of the ladder, pulling herself upwards and above their heads; she kept her gaze firmly forward, muttering quietly to herself, "Brave like a Hufflepuff, be brave like a Hufflepuff, be brave."

Wearing a large grin, Aniya turned to face the rest of them, holding her arms wide and raising her eyebrows, wordlessly daring them to shower her with anything less than the highest of praise for what she'd accomplished.

"Alright," she said cheekily. "Who wants to go next, then? Anyone think they're as brave as those in the house of Hufflepuff?"

Chloe raised her hand, pushing past everyone else to grab the ladder, following after Shia's quickly disappearing legs above. The rest of them formed a line, climbing the ladder one after another—Brenton, then Nonny, then Clarke, Jo, Aniya, and finally Roxy, who left behind a special, invisible trap should anyone try to be clever and follow them onto the roof. It could be a really helpful thing when your family owned a shop dedicated to pranks.

When she pulled herself onto the roof, the others had already broken off and were quietly assembling their stations, setting themselves up for what might be a very long wait. Who knew when Trinh would attack?

Roxy sighed to herself, wishing that she could be anyone else in the world right at that moment. She didn't feel ready to go into battle, to fire curses at people her age or younger who were only doing what they had been trained to do all of their life. Things would be so much easier if she were a muggle who believed that witches and wizards were only meant for Halloween. Hell, she'd be better off even being someone like Molly or Hugo, who weren't about to risk everything for the fate of humanity. They were both older than Roxy was, but she had already experienced so many unspeakable horrors and would no doubt encounter even more today.

Then, knowing that moaning would get them no closer to the end, Roxy popped her knuckles and got into place, setting herself up for the longest wait of her life to begin.

She was situated over the intersection of Bumblebee Lane and Hogsworth Street, watching people enter and exit the local potions' shop. It was probably a good thing that hardly anyone ever looked up or else they might have noticed Roxy's dark face scanning through the thin morning crowd for signs of oncoming doom.

There were barely any people to begin with, which was understandable since it wasn't even eight in the morning yet and if today weren't incredibly important, Roxy wouldn't be up and about right then either; she would much prefer to still be sleeping.

No one spoke for several minutes, nor even looked at each other until there was a loud cursing noise form the ground below, where the drawn up adder was. Jo, the closest, stood up slowly, wand aloft as she peeked over the edge of the roof.

She turned around, smirking slightly. "It's just Tilly," she announced to everyone else's relief. "Should I let her up first or interrogate her?"

"No interrogation," Aniya reminded her sharply. "We've already discussed this, Joanne. A simply security question will suffice, you know that. Don't be rude just because you don't like someone—it makes you seem petty."

Jo rolled her eyes as she climbed over the roof. "Oh, sure, because we don't want to be rude in the middle of a brewing war situation. Because being rude is absolutely uncalled for. If I come across an enemy soldier, I'll be sure to invite them over for tea and ask them about their day _before_ I knock them out."

Then she disappeared over the edge, leaving Aniya to huff quietly to herself and turn back to watching the street below.

A few minutes later, Jo and Tilly reappeared; apparently, she must have acceptably passed whatever security questions that Jo had asked her, though that didn't stop Tilly from scowling around at them all, disgruntled.

"You lot weren't supposed to be up here yet," Tilly said coldly, putting her hands on her hips. "Do you know how long I stood outside of your flat knocking on the door for you idiots to come outside? Nearly ten minutes, that's how long!"

"Well, maybe you should have used your Ravenclaw wits to figure out that we were already up here a little faster instead of being a pissant about it and blaming us," Jo replied in a snippy voice, arms placed firmly over her chest. "It's not exactly our fault that you aren't bright enough to figure something like that out."

"How was I supposed to know that you guys weren't going to do your job right and head up here when you were meant to, which would have been after I had arrived already? But, honestly, what else _should_ I have actually expected from you and Roxy when you two have _never_ done what you were told to do? After all, you're both a couple of immature children who have apparently made it your goal to drive me crazy!"

Roxy turned around from where she was sitting. She didn't roll her eyes or raise her voice, merely looking into Tilly's eyes and said in a very calm, even tone, "Matilda Longbottom, Joanna Wedgewood, both of you will sit down right now, shut your mouths, and do your job. I honestly don't care what anyone thinks about anyone else here because today there are so many more important things to focus on than petty squabbles that we really should have dropped the second that we graduated from Hogwarts. If you're going to call me immature, then maybe you should stop to look in the mirror first since I've not said a single petty or childish thing yet."

Looking properly admonished, the two girls drifted towards their appropriate spots, only glancing at each other long enough to exchange a brief but fierce glare. When she sat down, Jo flipped off Tilly behind her back and then turned to focus on what she had been assigned to do.

The group fell quiet once more; on other roofs several streets away or in various discreet locations, the other fourteen groups were also finishing setting themselves up, settling in with the same nervous faces and fearful looks.

An owl swooped past them, flapping its wing in their direction as it dived out of sight, a letter clutched tightly in its beak. Roxy wondered where the owl was going—who it belonged to, who would be receiving the letter, and whether or not both of those people would still be alive at the end of the day. She wondered if _she_ would still be alive at the end of the day after all the dust had cleared and the bodies were done falling.

The owl flew past her again, this time hooting in a shrill voice as it proceeded to nearly dive bomb Roxy, only pulling up from danger at the last possible second. Its talons clipped her hair, making Roxy squeak in surprise. What in the name of Merlin's beard was the daft bird hoping to accomplish by assaulting her?

"You okay, Roxy?" Lily asked, twisting around to stare at her cousin, who had jumped to her feet and was waving her wand around wildly, scowling at the air above her head.

Roxy shook her head, growling. "Did you not see that bloody idiot of an owl? It nearly flew into my face. I think it might be one of those ill birds you hear about sometimes that aren't in their right mind any more."

"Why would an owl _attack_ you, though, ill or not?" asked Lily; she was barely able to contain her laughter at the mental image of Roxy trying to fend off a feral bird pecking at her face and hands. "Maybe it just wanted to use your hair as a nest or something?"

"Oh yeah, you're hilarious, Lils, absolutely just the funniest person I have ever met in my entire life. In fact, why don't you come over here so I can physically show you how funny I find all of this by hitting you in the face?"

just then, the owl appeared once more, letting out a hoot loud enough to attract the attention of everyone else on the roof with them.

"What in the hell?" Aniya said loudly, watching in confusion as the owl circled over the roof three times, each time letting out a loud hoot.

The damned bird turned its sights on Roxy once more, flying quickly in her direction. Roxy jumped out of the way, scowling up at the bird before it disappeared yet again, flying over the other side of the building and out of sight.

"That's the third time in less than five minutes that I've seen that stupid bird," Roxy told them, swiping at her hair for any stray feathers. "I don't know what's wrong with that bloody thing, I swear. It's not anyone's that I recognise, that's for damn sure."

The other nine shook their heads, looking equally as confused by the sudden appearance of the seemingly deranged bird. It didn't make sense where the silly thing had come from or what it apparently wanted with Roxy.

"Did you perhaps recently piss off an entire parliament of owls?" asked Tilly with a small smirk, covering her mouth to avoid snickering.

"A what of owls?" Jo eyed the brunette with an expression of annoyed disbelief. "Could you _be_ any more pretentious, Longbottom? You could just call it a flock of owls like a normal person would, but _no_ , you have to show off every chance you get."

"Well, that isn't the proper term for it, Wedgewood. I wouldn't come across as pretentious all the time if you were a little more studious and intellectual. Honestly, it's like dealing with a toddler. I can't handle even trying to hold a conversation with you."

Roxy rolled her eyes at their antics before looking nervously up at the sky, expecting the owl to appear in the air once more. "I think we have a little more pressing details to deal with right now than what a bunch of how owls are called or how pretentious Tilly is—which is a lot, by the way—especially since the particular owl in question seems to have some kind of personal vendetta against me and my face."

The owl appeared yet again as though summoned by her words. It squawked loudly in their direction; that was when Roxy realised that the letter she'd seen earlier in its beak was no longer there. She glanced around, wondering if the letter had potentially fallen somewhere around on the roof one of the times it had swooped down on her.

"Does anyone see a letter?" she asked, doing her best to ignore the loud hooting behind her. "A normal letter in a yellow envelope? Does anyone see it around here?"

The Starkid ex-members looked around on the ground around them, glancing about for a scrap of bright yellow that might catch the eye. Roxy could see nothing but the dark and damp brick that covered the roof; behind her, the owl continued to hoot obnoxiously.

"I found it!" cried Chloe, holding up the yellow envelope. It had darkened around the edges from a mixture of the owl's wet beak and the bricks that were still covered with dark rain drops from last night's storms.

Roxy walked over to Chloe, taking the letter from her little sister and opening it quickly, taking out the warped cream paper from inside. She turned the envelope over, noticing that her name was written in a familiar hand—though she didn't know where she'd seen it before—and in a bright red ink that starkly contrasted the yellow of the paper. Then, unfolding the actual letter, she began to read, wondering who was sending her an owl right at that moment.

 _Roxanne Weasley,_

 _You have ignored our warnings for too long. We have told you time and time again not to cross us but you have chosen incorrectly far too often and left us with no choice. We know that you and many others are attempting to prepare for our destruction and we welcome you to try, but know that there will be no end to this war that will not contain your dead body laying in the streets, your blood on our hands. And believe us when we say that we do not want that ending, but you are bringing such a fate upon yourself. Surrender yourself and our brethren and we will spare your loved ones. But fail to do so before we arrive and suffer the consequences._

— _You know who it is_

She looked up from the letter to see that everyone else was watching her carefully; the owl was long gone, probably back to wherever its owners were staying at the moment. The others looked on in silence as Roxy crumpled up the parchment and threw it aside.

"If Trinh Itawa thinks she can scare me into giving up then she has another thing coming. I refuse to surrender to someone like her. I don't care if she threatens me a hundred times, I'm not going to back down from a fight when it's for something that I believe in." She set her jaw, giving the others a firm glance. "So Trinh Itawa can go straight to hell—we're still fighting and it won't be _our_ bodies in the streets at the end!"

Jo grabbed the sleeve of Roxy's robes, pulling her aside to whisper into her friend's ear. "Do you suppose that Itawa was one of those people who kept sending you all of those threats last year? How similar is the handwriting, the wording?"

"I don't know." Roxy shook her head, looking down at the crumpled parchment that she'd tossed away to the other end of the roof. It moved slightly in the wind but then settled down once more. "I'd have to find other letters and compare handwriting. But the words certainly match up and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that Trinh was at least one of the people who took on harassing me as their newest hobby for a while."

"Do you suppose that she's being serious about all of this? That she really will kill us all, but only if we don't surrender to her and the Faceless One? What if—what if she's telling the truth and she'll spare us as long as we give up the fight? I don't want to die, Roxy, and I know you don't either. Wouldn't it be smarter to just give in, at least this once?"

"No." Roxy gave her friend a harsh look. "I know what you're thinking, that saving ourselves is the most reasonable and logical solution to everything, but think about it long term. If we were to go to Albus right now and ask him to meet with Trinh about surrendering, he'd laugh at us—and if we tried to go over his head and did it ourselves, he'd probably go spare. But even more important than that is that by saving ourselves in this moment, then the only thing we'll be doing is sacrificing millions of lives down the line as well as risking our own lives all over again when the Faceless One decides to finish his mission of eradicating the planet of all humanity. It wouldn't be smart to give into her, not if we all want to survive, not to mention that we don't even know if Itawa can be trusted. For all we know, we'll surrender and then she'll take our heads off before the last words are even out of our mouths. It's not smart."

"I'm glad you said 'smart' and not 'right'," Jo replied, though she was still frowning slightly. "If you'd tried to make me take the moral high road, I would have knocked you out and run off to turn us all in."

"Are you two done gossiping yet or are we going to have to keep standing around and wait for you to finish up?" Tilly snapped at them, hands once more on her hips.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Jo said in a breezy tone, waving her hands in Tilly's direction. "Who cares what you think, we were talking about something a little more important than your precious time and feelings, Longbottom."

Roxy sighed, holding up her palms as she turned to the rest of Group Three. "Alright, no more distractions or nonsense or anything else like that. Let's all just go back to our seats, shut our mouths, and pay attention. After all, I'm sure that no one here wants to be the reason that we're caught unaware—because standing up here arguing means that no one is watching the streets below, remember that."

Tilly wasn't pleased by it, still scowling in Roxy and Jo's direction, but she, like everyone else, drifted back to her spot without a word, settling down on her knees to avoid letting the ends of her robes touch the damp brick and looked below her, stomach twisting in on itself.

When would the enemy come?

* * *

"What time is it?" Albus asked Scorpius, turning to look at his husband.

"Uh..." He looked down at his watch, tapping the face when he noticed that none of the hands were moving. The watch's hands stuttered and then sped forward to the correct time. "Seven after eight. Everyone should be in place by now. Now all we have left to do is sit here and wait. How long do you think they'll make us watch for their arrival?"

Albus shrugged. "If we're lucky, they'll let us wait forever and just never show up. Somehow, though, I get the feeling we won't be so lucky to escape fate."

He glanced over his shoulder to where the rest of Group One was set up, ready and alert. They had Brennan, who had been surprisingly quiet so far; Lindsey, who held her head between her legs, shoulders quaking; and Victoria, who stared stonily ahead, jaw set and a snarl curling her mouth as she searched for enemy soldiers.

From Starkid they had a girl named Melissa Bonner, who was sixteen and kept telling everyone she wasn't afraid even though she kept throwing up; Nicholas Croft, fifteen, who kept putting his wand on the ground only to snatch it back up and turn it around nervously in his hands; fourteen year old twins, Carron and Carrie Vanguard, entirely identical, aside from gender, from their curly blonde hair to the way they unconsciously mirrored each other's actions; and lastly, Anne Holls, only twelve, a terrified little girl who had settled herself down next to Brennan and was chatting endlessly to the silent older male in order to keep herself distracted from how much she wanted to cry.

"Do you think they're ready?" Scorpius asked, nodding his had in the direction of the others before raising his eyebrows at Albus.

"Does it really matter if they're ready—if _any_ of us are ready? Even if you were the most prepared and least anxious person here, none of it will matter if you get unlucky and someone throws a curse your way or even a fireball. I'm sure Isaac Baumann knew exactly what he was doing, being a fully trained Auror, but that didn't save his life."

"He jumped in front of the enemy to save your dad's life, though. That was totally different from being caught off guard."

Albus shook his head, not willing to push the issue as he looked away. "Who really cares, Scor? If we're ready then we're ready. If not, then we'll die that much faster, won't we? Not a whole lot we can do about it now."

Jus then a grey owl flew by with a bright yellow envelope clutched in its mouth; the whole group turned to watch as it disappeared from sight, each of them wondering where the bird was going and what the letter held.

Scorpius sighed and moved to hug Albus tightly, wrapping his arms around the other male. "There's no need to be anxious, Albus. I have confidence in you and all the planning that's gone into this. Can't you have a little confidence in yourself for once?"

"If they die, it'll be all my fault, though," Albus murmured, settling into his husband's hold. "I'll never be able to forgive myself if someone dies."

"No, no, it won't be your fault, Al, it won't. You won't be the one to hold a wand to their head or hurt them in any way. You weren't even the one who brought all these people along. I know you feel responsible for everyone, but there is no need to blame yourself, especially when you consider that nothing has even happened yet. You're fine, Albus, I promise. You just need to keep calm and believe in our victory, okay?"

Shaking himself away from Scorpius' grip, shaking his head and running his arms over his own shoulders, Albus looked unconvinced. "We're gonna die, Scor. We're all gonna die, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we may fight it. They're more prepared and stronger than we are. They have every advantage—who even knows _when_ they're coming or _how_ many people they have Do you? Do any of you?" He raised his voice, looking frantically to the others.

They looked from Scorpius to Albus nervously, unsure as to why they were suddenly being screamed at by their leader or what was really even being screamed at them.

"Are you having some sort of major freak out, Potter? What the hell is wrong with you?" Brennan spoke for the first time since he'd showed up earlier that morning. "Would you stop bloody screaming for a few seconds and start making some sort of sense?"

Albus groaned, putting his head in his hands for a few seconds before stomping away form the rest of them with a fierce scowl on his face. He walked over to the edge, grumbling quietly to himself as he peered into the street below, shaking his head.

Shrugging, Scorpius gave the others a sheepish look at his husband's seemingly random outburst. "I really don't know what's gotten into him all of a sudden. I think he's just a bit stressed out, you know, because of the war and all. Sorry."

"Aren't we all, though?" Lindsey said, a slight tremor in her voice. "Aren't we all anxious—scared, frightened, panicked by the idea of dying today? Why's he get to yell about it like he's somehow different from the rest of us? Why does he get to have a big fit and freak out about nothing and then storm off like a kid?"

Brennan, turning to eye Scorpius, suddenly asked, "Hey, Malfoy, do you know what time it is?" He rolled his eyes as Lindsey kept grumbling about Albus but focused on the younger blond.

Scorpius glanced down at his watch, noticing that it had frozen once more. He groaned, wondering what the hell was wrong with the bloody thing all of a sudden. It had been a seventeenth birthday present from his parents and Scorpius always took great care of it as his most prized possession. So why was it freaking out now?

"Scor?" Albus said loudly, grabbing his husband's arm and shaking him. "Scor, look down there, below you. Do you see that?"

He turned to the others, calling for their attention so that they could all hurry to look in the direction that he was pointing. Below them, on the streets, people wearing dark robes were marching down the narrow alleys in an organised fashion, slowly breaking apart into smaller units. Though they moved in one fluid motion, their actions were wild, touching the walls and people nearest to them; some things caught fire while others suddenly grew a layer of dark ice or exploded.

"It's them," Albus whispered harshly, his eyes widening. "They're here, we have to tell the others right now." He shivered and backed away from the rest of the group, pulling out his wand and hurriedly crying the incantation.

Fourteen large Patronus shaped like bears dashed from his wand, scattering in different directions, though each carried the exact same message. _They're here, they're here, prepare yourselves, they're here, they're here._


	61. The war begins

Hugo glowered sullenly at the people standing outside of his front door. There were four in total—three in dark robes and cloths covering their faces while the fourth was a diminutive female with short brown hair, large eyes, and a coy smile. Hugo had never seen her before in his life.

"Hello Hugo Ambrose Weasley," the girl said. She didn't seem much older than Roxy—he would put her somewhere between sixteen and twenty and most likely was trying to seem older. "My name is Astrid Woods. I am here on behalf of Phoenix. You may not recognise me without all of my usual...trappings, but perhaps you recognise the name 'Brother Crane'?"

He shook his head, bewildered. Brother Crane was a broad-shouldered, fairly tall person and this girl was absolutely minuscule. How could they possibly be the same person?

The girl smirked at him as though she could read his thoughts. "Ah, yes, I know how Brother Crane is so tall and muscular and _masculine_. But do you think anyone would ever take me seriously if they first met me like this?" She waved a hand up and down, indicating to herself. "What you see in Phoenix meetings is merely a disguise—a series of Polyjuice potions, if you will, to keep me looking like anyone else."

"But why are you here?" Hugo asked her with a frown. It was one thing for him to suddenly and unexpectedly find out that Brother Crane wasn't at all who he thought they were, but there had to be some sort of logical explanation for _why_ Brother Crane was standing outside of his flat with three guards at six in the morning.

"Ah, yes, that is a good question. Why am I here? There could be any number of reasons, to be honest; I could lie and say that we need you or that you're crucial to something bigger, but in truth, the Leaders are going all around finding as many members of Phoenix as possible. There is a war brewing that will spill into reality later this morning and we need as many members to join as is possible. I was wondering, would you kindly do your best to stop this from happening? Would you help fight in this war?"  
"War?"

She nodded, now looking at him gravely. "Yes, bad people who wish to destroy all of humanity are coming and it is up to us to stop such an awful thing from happening. They're going to attack later today and I am calling on you as a loyal member of Phoenix to help save life as we know it."

His chest tightened as he blinked at her, his mind racing. This was his chance, the opportunity he had been looking for all of his life. He could fight for the good of all mankind just as his parents and family had done thirty years ago. If he did this, Hugo could finally make a name for himself. He could help to save the world and no longer be seen as just the younger child of Hermione and Ron Weasley, the one that never accomplished anything.

"Yes," he told Brother Crane, shaking her hand firmly. "I will fight for you, for Phoenix, and for all of humanity. I will help save the world."

Brother Crane smiled at him, though the smile did not quite reach her eyes. Hugo, too busy thinking of the future accolades that he would acquire from this, didn't notice. "Very good, Mr Weasley. That is very wise on your part. Now, would you kindly come with us? We have much to do before it is time to fight and you need to be prepared."

* * *

Hugo pulled the cloths and robes over his face, casting a voice modulating charm over himself before he looked around at a room full of people who looked just like him. There were at least fifty of them and, like any normal Phoenix meeting, Hugo had no idea who was who, and this was not helped by the fact that they no longer had their usual identifying animal pins for him to assign names to.

Brother Crane must have taken a dose of Polyjuice Potion because a glance around the room once more did not reveal any unusually small cloaked figures.

He sighed anxiously, wondering how much longer it would be before the enemy appeared and it would be time for them to defend the wizarding world. He had never done anything like this, having only ever heard about what war was like from his family members.

They always made war sound like it was horrifying and unbearably terrible to the point where it made seemingly brave adults have nightmares like a child would and otherwise kind and normal people like Uncle George turn violently hysteric due to excessive drinking to avoid recalling unwanted memories of the past.

But Hugo would be different; _this_ war would be different from the last one. The only ones who would die were the ones that deserved to. The only people who would suffer were those were so evil that they could possibly think that they were strong enough to harm the world. This time, the army in which he fought was stronger, older, fiercer than that of his parents. They were ready for battle, they were hungry for victory.

His hands shook, distracting Hugo from his inner monologue, reminding the twenty-one year old that he was still nervous and worried. After all, though he knew _why_ they were fighting, no one seemed to know exactly _who_ they would be fighting.

There were a few low murmurs coming from here and there as people quietly asked each other what was going to happen next or how many of the enemy they were supposed to be going up against in just an hour's time.

He turned to the person next to him, muttering in a quiet voice, "So do you know anything more about this than I do? All they really told me was that an enemy was coming to destroy life as we know it and it's our civic duty to stop that from happening.

The other person shrugged, not even turning in Hugo's direction. "Search me, mate. D'you really think anyone here knows? Hell, I bet'cha half of 'em, minimum, don't even care. They're probably just looking for a bloody fight and figured now was as good a time as any other—the 'cause' just as excusable as whatever violent nature they've been secretly hiding just under the surface anyway, waiting for the day they can act on it."

"And you?" asked Hugo, half-curious and half-repulsed by the idea that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of murder-happy nutters.

"What d'you think, mate? 'Course there's no need to ask where you fall in all of this, not when you're asking all sorts of noble questions about saving humanity and the like. It's fairly obvious you're here for the glory rather than the bloodshed. Personally, I think both ideologies are pure dragon shite plain and simple, but my mam didn't raise a philosopher, no sir, so it's not right up to me to be making judgements."

"Really? You seem fairly intelligent and speak eloquently enough to convince me otherwise. I think you'd make quite a good philosopher, mulling over all of the deep questions of life, searching for answers in the darkest reaches of the world."

The other person shook their head, chuckling softly. "No thanks, mate. I may think deep, but I'm not searching for any answers to life or some shite like that. Honestly, I just want to live through today before I start worrying about the bigger pictures of tomorrow."

"One day at a time kind of guy, then?"

"You got it, mate. Putting too much pressure on yourself about the 'could happen' or the 'what if' is more pressure than any man needs in his life, you feel me? Life's easier if you just let it happen to you and try to enjoy the ride."

Hugo bobbed his head up and down eagerly, trying to make it seem like he understood what the guy was saying perfectly, when in reality, he just felt more confused than ever. If the guy standing next to him didn't feel the pull of bloodlust or seek glory from fighting then why were they here? Why fight if you had no purpose to fight? Why kill when you didn't feel the passion that came along with taking a life? Why draw your wand if there was no draw to the power of the very spells you were uttering?

But he pretended like it was all perfectly logical—the most reasonable thing he'd ever heard before—because Hugo's head was beginning to hurt from trying to think it all over and he really didn't want to go into battle with his head already aching.

Instead, he turned to face forward once more, watching as the Leaders all assembled at the front of the crowd, holding up their robed arms to get everyone's attention; like the rest of the members of Phoenix, they wore dark robes and cloths pulled over their faces, but it was obvious that they were different from everyone else, stronger and more powerful.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the Leaders in one echoing voice that carried to the very back of the room. "You know us as your Leaders, your Guardians, and your Guides. For many, we are even family—the parent that finally loves you. For others, we are teachers—the one that respects your thoughts and praises your successes. For some, we are the encouraging friend or simply someone who will listen to all of your worries and woes. We have promised you many times a Leader who leads us all—a Supreme who is above even those you see before you. And we have heard your concerns about the validity of this Supreme. You wonder if perhaps we are lying or fooling you into believing in myths and faery-tales. Today, though, on this day that will go down in history as our glorious triumph, we present to you the Supreme."

As a singular, fluid entity, they raised their arms to point as an old woman appeared in the doorway, smiling and waving at them. _She seems cold_ , Hugo thought, _even when she smiling, as though she's devoid of all happiness._

The Supreme was older than he expected, although that was rather an understatement. She looked to be in her sixties or seventies, with greying black hair and sharp features. She was of some kind of Asian descent—Korean? or Vietnamese, perhaps?—and on the shorter side. Most importantly, the Supreme was a _woman_ , which, as sexist as it might have seemed, Hugo truly had not been expecting the Supreme to be.

Everyone else appeared to be shocked as well judging by the growing buzz of murmuring low voices as people expressed their shock and confusion, turning their heads back and forth as if expecting this to turn out be an elaborate hoax of some kind. Surely this old woman wasn't _really_ the Supreme?

"Hello, my faithful followers," the Supreme said in a slow, even tone, standing before them all and just in front of the line of Leaders. From her first word, there was silence. Their attention was drawn to her, all of the air sucked from the room as they hung upon her very breath. "I am your Supreme, Phuong Itawa. I have been watching you from afar, observing every meeting, assessing your readiness for battle. My faithful flock, it pains me to say this, but that day of battle is upon us and sooner than I might have hoped. But I have trust in you that you are strong and bold and brave enough for the burden that I place upon you. I trust you to hold your wands high and fight for what you believe in—for honour and humanity and the sanctity of all human life both here now and still to come. Would you kindly agree with me, my children?"

Everyone cheered, Hugo included, though he thought for a split second that the Supreme had smirked when talking about the sanctity of life. But he pushed that away, convincing himself that it was a trick of the light.

"The enemy is strong, large, and willing to die for what they believe in. are you? Will you kindly stand up and fight to save humanity? Will you kindly be the voice of reason in a cloud of people who have lost their minds? Will you kindly pick up the wand when your fellow soldier drops it? Will you kindly remain my faithful men to the very last, no matter what this day will bring?"

"Yes!" shouted Phoenix in response, from the Leaders to the newest recruit. "Yes!" They were one voice, one soldier, one wand. All they needed now was to be pointed at a foe and they could finally show their Supreme how loyal they truly were. "Yes, Supreme!"

She smiled coldly down at her newly loyal army. Their plan was finally in motion; soon, that Weasley girl and all the others would know what it meant to come across her and her children. Soon, she would rule the world.

* * *

" _They're here, they're here, prepare yourself, they're here, they're here_ ," the Patronus told them in Albus' voice.

Roxy jumped up, looking in the direction the Patronus right as it disappeared. Everyone else gawked at the spot where it had been for several long seconds before running to the edge of the roof to see if they could spot the oncoming army.

"There!" cried Shia loudly, pointing her finger in the direction of what appeared to be at least several dozen people in dark cloaks marching up the street towards them. "Look, look, there they are, headed our way!"

The army was destroying everything in its path, setting things on fire or freezing sections of a building before smashing the bricks into crumbled nothingness. They knocked out anyone who crossed their path, though apparently a few of the soldiers were so eager for bloodshed that they murdered anyone in sight. It was a larger army than expected—terrifyingly so—with more people than Roxy had ever thought Trinh would be able to gather together.

"What are we going to do?" Aniya asked, gaping the direction of the approaching enemy. "What do we do now, Roxy? Roxy?" She glanced at her friend, who had frozen in place. "Roxy, you know the next stage of our plan, please, what are we supposed to do? Roxy?!"

Roxy did not seem to hear her as she continued to stare in horror at the dark cloaks approaching closer with every passing second.

Sighing, Jo pushed past everyone else and stomped up to her friend. "I _told_ you, Aniya, if it's necessary, then just slap her." With that, holding up her hand, she moved to smack the other girl in the face. Before she could make contact, though, Roxy's hand caught Jo's and she shifted her head slightly to look harshly at the younger girl, making Jo blink and back off.

"I'm fine," Roxy said slowly, shaking her head to clear it. "Sorry, I just panicked a little bit." She then turned her gaze to the rest of Group Three. "Okay, everyone, here's the plan. We, along with Groups Six, Nine, Ten, and Thirteen will all meet down on the ground—they'll probably already be on their way so we'll need to move fast. There are fifty of us in this cluster and there will be three total clusters stationed throughout the area. Remember that we are _not_ going for kills, only for Stuns or something that will incapacitate them without bringing harm. Now, here, take these."

She threw Quidditch gloves and face coverings to each of them from a bad that she'd brought up with her. Thankfully, it had been pretty easy to charm everything to be the correct size for everyone, considering how much work she'd put into all of it.

"What the fuck are these for?" Tilly asked in confusion, looking up at Roxy with a furrowed brow. "I'm not putting this shit on, are you joshing me?"

"Protection," Roxy explained, pulling on her own gloves and face covering. "No one wants to get burnt or anything like that, right? I've put anti-burn charms on everything, so definitely keep them on at all times. Now, everyone follow me."

They walked after Roxy, each clambering down the ladder one after the other. They went around the side of the building, where Roxy indicated that they needed to hurry past before anyone noticed them. The group rushed from the block of flats to hide under the cover of a flower shop's awning before continuing to an alleyway where the other four groups in their small army were also arriving at roughly the same moment.

The other group leaders—Rose, Lucy, Desmond, and an older man from Starkid named Nathan—all stopped in front of Roxy and her group. They were also wearing protective gear over their hands and face.

Rose nodded to Roxy and Lily, who scowled back at the redhead. "You see them?" Rose asked, raising her eyebrows at her cousins. "The black cloaks?"

"Yeah," replied Roxy, feeling her shoulders tense up and her breathing hitch slightly.

"The Faceless One is with another group of people, so we know this isn't the only one," said Desmond. "Malaya spotted him." He pointed to a woman behind him. "I'm not sure who's leading the group nearest to us, but I didn't see Trinh, and I think she' is probably not the sort to hide behind other soldiers. From what I understand, she liked to be fairly dramatic and show off how much power and presence she has over everyone else around her."

Roxy and Jo both nodded, along with a few of the Starkid members. Having met her personally, they could definitely affirm that Trinh Itawa was completely off her rocker when it came to claiming and maintaining her power over others.

"Okay," said Rose, raising her voice just enough for everyone to hear her without the possibility of being overheard by any potential on-comers. "Is everyone wearing protective gear?" They nodded. "Good, good. We will move as one unit, five rows of ten people each. There is to be _no_ killing unless you are devoid of all other options, is that understood? Only Stuns or non-lethal use of your powers, for those who have them. We are not cold-blooded murderers—we are not _them,_ right? If you find a civilian, they become your first priority; get them out of harm's way before rejoining the fray. You are—all of you—humanity's only hope today. Stay strong, stay firm, and no matter how scared you are right now or how scared you may become, do not back off. If we stay together, we can win this, and it is _crucial_ that we stay together. Now, who is ready to save the wizarding world and humanity as we know it?"

The rest of them nodded, a few of the braver people shouting out in agreement before being quietly shushed by their companions lest the enemy overhear them.

"Then let's go, ladies and gentlemen." She raised her wand into the air. "For humanity! For victory! For the future!"

"For humanity! For victory! For the future!" the cluster echoed back to her and the air was filled with wands and closed fists. Then, as one mind, they assembled into a block and headed out from the alleyway in a solid group, storming down the street in a single, fluid movement.

It didn't take long for them to run into a populated area full of frightened civilians who were running away form the approaching black-robed army. The people panicked at the sight of a newly approaching group of what looked like human-faced monsters wearing dark gloves and masks over their faces; people screamed and looked around frantically for a way to escape.

Roxy looked to Rose, who nodded, and then broke away from the group holding her wand to her throat and murmuring, " _Sonorous._ " Voice amplified, she raised her other hand to draw attention to herself. "People of Diagon Alley! We are here to rescue you! We are not the enemy and we wish you no harm. Please, do not panic, but move quickly and with great purpose away from this place. If you have a home outside of Diagon Alley, go to it now. If you do not, please go to a friend or family member's home. You are not safe here. Please leave quickly—Apparate away from this place or else move as swiftly as possible if you cannot Apparate. The people in dark cloaks wish to hurt you, so hurry away from Diagon Alley now! It is not safe here, please understand this and heed my warnings."

She repeated the message several more times, glad to see as the number of civilians dwindles as they Apparated away to safety or else ran past Roxy and the army in a panic, screaming the same warnings to those still unaware of what was approaching.

"Roxy! Rose!" yelled Desmond, pointing into the distance. "They're coming our way! There's no more time, we're going to have to head them off!"

Sure enough, just in view, though not close enough yet to attack, was the approaching army of dark-cloaked enemies. It was not yet determinable as to how many there were coming towards them in a mad rush, but the sight of the enemy made Roxy's stomach churn and a few of the younger members of her group screamed in terror.

But no one left, though a few were certainly considering it. They huddled closer together and kept moving forward, each person doing their best to put on a fearless expression and to keep from looking like the little child that they all felt like inside.

Whether they were ready or not, the fight had come to them. It was time to save the world.

* * *

Hugo felt no doubt even as he watched one of the strange people in his platoon make a chunk of the street explode before his very eyes. The man laughed, turning to smirk at Hugo with a taunting expression before leaping forward to do it again.

These people were not normal, he knew, the members of Phoenix quickly discovered of their new comrades, though that hardly seemed to matter. They wore dark robes like everyone else but didn't hide their faces or disguise their voices. Not to mention the fact that they were able to do magic without using wands and the magic that they cast was far beyond what any normal witch or wizard should have been able to do.

A few of those from Phoenix tried to hate these strange new people, but found that to be impossible; they were envious of them, afraid of them, and wanted to know how far their odd powers could be pushed before they finally hit a breaking point and turned from man to the beast that they so clearly truly were on the inside— no normal human could do those things.

Because it was clear that though they _looked_ human, these newcomers were something different, something unknown. It was like looking into a nightmare and a heavenly dream all at once.

The Supreme called them her Army of Children—her Starkids. Hugo vaguely recognised the name from somewhere, though he couldn't for the life of him place it and decided that he had always known Starkid, as they had always known him. They were one and the same, he and these new soldiers.

And when the man cackled again to see the street fly up around their faces, Hugo didn't even bat an eyelid. No one from Phoenix did. As far as they could recall, this was entirely normal behaviour and _Phoenix_ members were the strange ones for not able to do those sorts of things.

The idea that Hugo wasn't normal upset him briefly, but he shook it off and kept marching in time with everyone else. He was fighting for a great cause, after all. He was here to save the world from evil people who wanted to destroy everything.

The Starkid member made another large, gaping hole in the street, cheering wildly when he did, watching as the stone exploded and flew into the faces of those nearby. He threw his hands into the air, his hood falling back enough to reveal the amusement on his face, the cackling smirk of his mouth as he watched the road crumble around him.

No one stopped him or said anything. But what was there to even say? This was his job, this was what he needed to do to save everyone.

Hugo watched the man, wondering if, when they won, he too could feel so free as to enjoy himself and do whatever he wanted. It never even occurred to him that his side might lose. After all, the good guys _never_ lost; that was the whole point of fighting, to prove yourself to be on the right side of history. And if they were trying to defeat people who wanted everyone to die, then obviously Hugo was on the right side, the winning side.

Besides that, it was as if his brain wouldn't allow him to think of a possible future where his side might possibly lose. The very thought, if he tried to focus on it for more than a second, was simply pushed away without any rational explanation for why he couldn't consider that as a potential end result of today's war.

"Look ahead!" someone shouted and they all surged forward to catch a glimpse of the enemy. A yell went out at the sight of the approaching army, wearing dark clothing over their faces, weird masks of some kind. The army was of indeterminable size, but it was large enough that some people began to cheer for the idea to be able to disarm and take down such a dangerous enemy.

They were ready for the fight to come to them—or better yet, to take the fight to those they hoped to stop. It was time to save the world.

* * *

Rose raised her wand into the air, ordering them all to stop. They paused, waiting for her to speak. The redhead took a deep breath, calming the intense beating pulse of her heart.

"Now is our moment of reckoning, ladies and gentleman. Do you see them?" She pointed in front of them, to the approaching army, which was now yelling wildly like lunatics. "They will not hesitate to slay or incapacitate in some way every single person here. They see us as only the next thing standing in the way between themselves and total domination of the wizarding population. It is our duty, our responsibility, our very nature to prevent them from winning. No mater what, we will not back down, we will not give up, and we will never surrender. Do you believe that we can win? Do you believe that we can succeed? Do you realise that you are all here to save the world?"

They nodded and yelled back in agreement, making Rose look around at the small army with a mixture of pride and panic. "Very well then," she said as the other army let out another loud cry and continued towards them. "Let's go, everyone. To victory."

"To victory!" The whole of them—all fifty, afraid and young and ready to die—surged forward to meet the enemy. The battle had begun.

* * *

"Well?" Phuong asked, addressing the daemon coldly. "Here is your war, your death, your scurrying, blind panic. Are you pleased now?"

"It is your war as much as is mine, human. Don't pretend like you don't also enjoy the delicious sound of screaming, the smell of life leaving a body. If you deny yourself such a pleasure, you'll be denying the very truth of what makes you alive. You love war just as much as I do, my dear Itawa, but the difference between you and me is that _I_ admit such truths with no moral quandaries whatsoever. Most humans can't bring themselves to do it, either, but I am no human, so why should lying to myself hold any real weight upon my non-existent soul?"

"You are a strange creature," said Phuong, though she allowed herself a smirk a the sound of loud shrieking a few blocks over. The war had truly begun.

The daemon chuckled. "The little boy calls me Khiro, did you know? He thinks I'm not aware of it, but then, what kind of daemon would I be if I couldn't hear the words and private feelings of those who have chosen to serve me? I rather find the name endearing, to be honest. _Khiro._ I suppose he calls you _Bà ngoại_?" One look at Phuong revealed an intense scowl on the old woman's face. "Or not. Do you still reject him, then?"

"August Batts? That _vấn đề nhỏ_?" Phuong shrugged indifferently at the thought of her daughter's little pet. "He is a mere child, an insignificant pawn in the greater plan. I care nothing for him or any thought of his, no matter how petty of an importance they hold. My daughter adores him still as a silly girl adores a kitten but I have no personal use nor faith in him. Rafael makes a mistake in keeping that one, as I have said before. _Ông là tốt hơn hết chết_ , for all I care."

"Where is your partner in crime, by the way? I've yet to meet him and I'd ever so love to so that we might discuss further plans."

"Rafael feels that he is above such things as war and violence. He has never quite agreed with me to raise the children as warriors—as they must be—but he's also never been in charge of making that final decision, now has he? But his hope, his all too foolish hope, has always been to raise them to _help_ the human race, can you believe that? As though the human race would ever deserve such help. I've told him no every single time, of course, even if he does persist so. But because of his distaste for all of this, he will not be joining us today, I believe."

"Hm." The daemon turned in the direction of a female's scream in the distance. "Humans can be quite the bloodthirsty creatures, can't they? Like sharks, circling the scent until they've rallied themselves into a violent feeding frenzy. Ah, in truth, if I didn't despise the majority of your kind, I would love to keep all of you around for my own twisted amusement."

Phuong didn't respond, thinking instead of her children, the ones who weren't Trinh—the ones who were _promising_ but not _the promise_. They were all out there somewhere in the battle, her children, fighting because she had put them into a program that taught them to kill and destroy rather than love and build. The thought made her proud, knowing she had birthed the future leaders of the world, the greater tomorrow.

What did this daemon truly know about humans? What did Rafael know about how to raise the next generation? Neither of them understood it like she did. Her children were her children and Starkid were _all_ her children. She was the mother of tomorrow.

Another scream filled the air and then a second and a third. Death had come to Diagon Alley and it knocked quite loudly. Bodies fell to the ground from both sides, blood filled the streets, and harsh shrieks continued to echo off of the walls as curses were fired and lives were taken.

Phuong smiled to herself as she took in the sound of it all. She was the mother of tomorrow—and tomorrow had finally come. The wait was over. She was queen.


	62. Battle of Diagon Alley

Roxy looked around her, noticing the dozen or more bodies that already were laid out all over the street. They'd been fighting—she didn't even know for how long—and Roxy was exhausted by this point. She didn't know where the others were—Rose, Lily, Jo, Aniya—but she was a bit busy at the moment, surrounded by enemies on all sides with the only thing protecting her from harm being the gear that covered her face and hands as well as quick reflexes from years of Quidditch to avoid anything fired in her direction.

She watched as someone in dark robes fell not too far away, brought down by three Hogwarts' Starkid members who seemed far too numb for what they were doing. They merely spat at the still form of their fallen enemy before moving onto the next person they could find.

Sensing that someone was behind her, Roxy spun around to see a black-cloaked person holding up their wand in her direction. She couldn't make out any features behind the cloths covering his face, but she could tell the person was smirking at her, believing Roxy to be cornered.

The person raised their wand, pointing it in the direction of her heart, but before they could get a single syllable out, Roxy cried, " _Expelliarmus_!" at them, sending her would-be attacker flying backwards and crashing into the cobblestone street.

So much was going on at once—running, screaming, fighting—that Roxy could hardly focus on her surroundings. Instead, like the Starkid girls, she merely went through the battle one moment at a time, moving from one enemy to the next and feeling incredibly lucky that no one had managed to catch her off-guard yet.

There were so many dead people all around her already so that the stench of the fallen clogged her nose and made her gag. She could hardly take a step without seeing yet another victim of a battle that she had helped to start. Each nameless corpse was one more person taken before their time and, regardless of what side they fought on, Roxy felt guilt well up inside of her, knowing that she had played a part, however small, in causing their early demise.

"But they're the ones who chose to fight," she told herself sternly, firing a spell at another oncoming attacker without pausing. "I can't really be held responsible for what others choose to do, right? I'm not— _Expelliarmus!—_ to blame if someone gets up in the morning and decides that today is the day that they want to go to war."

She kept moving, jumping over her newest in a long line of fallen foes and continued forward, wishing this could all be over and done with already. Had she really even stopped to think about why they were fighting in the first place? Did any of this make sense, to waste like this? There was no benefit to it.

But the middle of a warzone was certainly no place to be contemplating the mysteries of life and war, especially when there were still so many people all rushing towards her that she could hardly focus long enough to think of the right spell in time.

So she pushed onwards, taking down anyone who dared to come at her. Roxy was really only looking for one person amongst the hundreds here and anyone else who got in the way was simply one more obstacle on her path to destroying Trinh Itawa.

"Roxy!"

When she spun around, it was to see Lily and Lucy struggling to take down a particularly tall enemy. He was over two metres tall with shaggy blond hair, and was seemingly impenetrable to whatever they tried to throw at him; perhaps he was covering himself in one of those strange transparent bubbles that she had seen two months ago in the Department of Mysteries.

Roxy ran to help them, pushing past anyone who tried to prevent her from getting across the street. She barely even noticed her attackers at this point, sending them flying away from her with a mumbled spell, not even turning to see them approach before she stopped them. They meant nothing to her, nothing at all, as all of her attention was drawn to something far more important—fulfilling her duty as a Weasley by helping to save her cousins' lives.

When she reached them, it was easy to see that, exactly as she'd thought, the blond man was, in fact, using a shield; Lily and Lucy were firing at him with everything they had but it simply wasn't enough to stop him from slowly closing in on the two step by step, a cruel smile on his lips as he closed the gap between them.

"Fuck the little birdies, pluck their little wings. Push them off the highest point and watch them fall with glee!" The man lifted his right hand and the building behind the two Weasleys exploding, nearly missing the girls in an avalanche of stone and brick. He moved even closer to the chaos. "The little redhead—we'll take her hair. The little brunette—we'll take her eyes. And you, the darkest little bird—" He whirled around, jabbing a finger at the approaching Roxy. "— _you_ , we'll cut the heart out and feast on your flesh for days! Oh, what marvellous fun we'll all have at our pretty tea party!"

The man was obviously deranged, lunging as close as his shields would allow and then pulling away at the last moment, laughing maniacally as everything blew up around him. He danced around confident in his ability to remain unharmed.

"How are the little birdies today? How are you on this fine morning of fire and destruction? _I'm fine_ , says the big, strong soldier because he's bigger and tougher than all the little birdies even if they are working together. They'll never be strong enough for the soldier man, not when he is filled with so much power and all that the little birdies have are their puny birdie sticks that won't hurt the soldier in a million years."

Roxy, rushing to her cousins' side, began firing a rain of curses upon the man, even though in the back of her mind she knew he was right and the three of them would never—could never—possibly be enough to stop him.

"Try, try, try all you like, I can't be stopped, I can't be broken. I'm your king now, yes, I'm your god. I rule over the little birds and drive them to the grave. Won't you give up, sweet birds, and see that I'm telling the truth? Join me, join me, and maybe I'll even let you live a little while longer instead of dancing in your blood right here."

"Will you just shut the bloody hell up already?" Lily snapped at him as she released another volley of curses in his direction. "You keep blathering on, calling us little birds, but you're just some psychopathic pervert that nobody gives the slightest shite about!"

He only laughed that much harder and kept dancing around, making amused faces at Lily's mounting frustration, enjoying the near screaming tone as she insisted that he stop talking and leave them alone—or even better yet, for him to die painfully right in front of them and never come back from the lowest depths of hell.

"Oh, the little birdies don't want to play, do they?" He almost sounded upset by the news that they were not as pleased as he was by his twisted little game, though the coldly amused smile remained on his lips. "Why don't you want to play with me, sweet ones? Why not? Do you not like me? Do I not make you happy?"

"Go to fucking hell!" Lily yelled back at him, her whole face having gone red with rage. "I hope you die and rot, you poor excuse for a person, you miserable piece of garbage, you absolute waste of human life!"

"But you can't hurt me, now can you?" His tone turned taunting, his smile becoming a smirk. "Three birdies may try as hard as they like but that doesn't give them the strength to stop me, not while I'm protected in here. You don't have the power to harm me, the brave soldier."

"They may not be able to do anything, but I can."

The man whirled around just in time to see Chloe standing behind him, holding her hands up and pointing them directly at him. "Night-night, arsehole," she told him grimly and then there was a bright flash of light.

Lily, Lucy, and Roxy all covered their eyes, turning away to avoid being blinded. There was an intense screaming noise and then it all stopped, the light fading as quickly as it had appeared. Opening their eyes once more revealed Chloe standing in front of the ashy remains of their attacker's dark robes. His body was gone, completely incinerated, and the shield he had covered himself with was long gone, faded into nothing just as he had.

"Hello, Roxy," Chloe said in response to the shocked look that the older girl gave her. "Lovely day, isn't it? If it weren't for all of this war nonsense going on, I'd almost ask if you could take me back to that ice cream parlour we visited last month. Unfortunately, I suspect we won't be able to do that given the current situation, so maybe another day."

Roxy continued to gape at the girl, opening and closing her mouth like a fish as she struggled to formulate a coherent response. "Chloe, you—you just disintegrated a man! Not only does that mean you totally broke the rules about not taking anyone's life but—but you just _disintegrated_ a man like it was nothing!"

Chloe shrugged. "It kind of was nothing, really. I've always been able to do this and I just saved your life, so you could at least try to be grateful."

"But you can't just do things like this, Chloe! That's why the rules were there, to protect innocent people such as yourself. How could you do something like that and be so casual about all of it? You just took a man's life!"

"He deserved it, Roxy! He was going to kill you if I didn't stop him—he was going to kill all three of you! I know him, I know how he works, playing with his victims like it's all a sick joke to him, something for him to laugh about as he's ending your life slowly and painfully."

"Roxy, she has a valid point," said Lily sharply, tugging at the sleeve of her cousin's robes. "If Chloe hadn't stopped him, we'd probably be dead soon enough. I hate to justify the taking of a life, but he wasn't exactly an innocent person, was he?"

" _She_ is innocent!" Roxy cried, pointing a finger at her sister. "She is a child still and I will not stand here and allow her to be corrupted by all of this. It is bad enough that she's here fighting at all but I am the one who suggested that we bring in some of those from Hogwarts so I blame myself for that one at least. But I will certainly not allow her to commit such atrocities, hopefully not ever again, but absolutely not at only fifteen years old. She has no reason to be corrupted at such an age! I simply will not allow it, do you understand me?"

Lily raised her hand and spoke softly. "No matter how we all feel about this, don't you guys think it's still rather inappropriate to be having this argument in the middle of a warzone? I mean, people are dying. Can't we leave this discussion alone for now at least?"

They became aware once more of the screaming all around them, the sounds of their friends and enemies dying, falling prey to curses and unusual powers.

"Fine," said Roxy, though she didn't like any of this. "We'll put the matter aside—for now. But Chloe is going to stay with us and we're going to stick to disarming only. _No powers._ "

They chose to keep walking, shooting down anyone who dared to cross paths with the group of four females. They were relentless, knocking out every enemy in sight, though at Roxy's insistence, their assault remained largely non-violent. She was no pacifist by any means, but the concept of taking a life when it served no real purpose to do so bothered Roxy on a fundamental level; not to mention that she wanted to be able to walk away from today and know that she was not personally guilty of murder.

It felt like the enemy was endlessly approaching, unforgiving and unyielding. For everyone they knocked down, it seemed that two more popped up ready and eager to take any of the girls out if they were found in a vulnerable moment. To avoid being caught off-guard, they moved as a singular tightly knit group, wands drawn, even Chloe despite her protests that she could be even more non-violent without a wand.

As they hurried through the streets, someone grabbed Lucy from behind, making her squeak in terror. Roxy and Lily immediately turned around, wands pointed at a figure wearing black robes, their face covered in cloths so that nothing of their features could be seen.

"Don't touch her!" yelled Roxy, glaring in the direction of Lucy's attacker. "Don't you bloody fucking touch her or I'll kill you!"

Muffled behind the cloths but still interpretable was the shocked response of, "Roxy? What the hell are you doing here in the middle of a war? Don't you realise that you could get hurt running around here right now?"

They gawked at the person before them, whose voice was that of their cousin Hugo's. But that didn't make any sense because why would Hugo be wearing the uniform of the enemy and why would he be fighting against them under the direction of a demon and lunatics who wanted nothing but the destruction of mankind?

He pulled the cloths down from his face, revealing to their horror the freckled Hugo Weasley, blinking at them with those familiar blue eyes. He was just as bewildered as they were, opening and closing his mouth several times in confusion as he struggled to comprehend why he was looking at several of his female cousins, all of whom were holding wands at his face.

"What are you doing here, you guys? There's a war going on, people are going to think you're fighting as well if you don't leave." He looked them up and down, taking in their masks and gloves. "W-why are you lot wearing those things? That's what—what those demons are wearing, the people I'm here to stop. Why are you wearing their uniforms? T-take it off, please, before somebody hurts you. You shouldn't be wear-wearing those clothes."

Roxy blinked at Hugo, just as confused as he was, both by his presence and by his strange words. Why did he think they were the ones with the enemy when he was the one wearing those hateful robes? And why _was_ he wearing those things anyway? Didn't he realise that those were the robes of people who wanted to destroy the world? Why was he wearing them—why was he even here in the first place?  
"Hugo?" Lily squawked, furrowing her brow at her cousin. "Hu, what's going on? I—I don't understand. Have you been brainwashed or something? Please tell me you aren't fighting for that awful bitch, Trinh Itawa. I could never forgive you if you are."

Hugo looked around at his quartet of bewildered relatives. "Uh, Trinh Itawa? I don't know who that is and I'm certainly not 'fighting for' her, but I am under the command of our Supreme—" The name would not pass his lips, hard as he tried, leaving Hugo to stumble over empty air and wonder why he could not explain that his Supreme Leader was...was… "I don't know who I'm fighting for," eh told them, a desperate whine to his words. "I knew a minute ago but I don't know now. Why am I here? Why are any of us here?"

The girls shared uneasy looked before Lily leant forward, eyeing Hugo carefully and wondering if this was all some sort of trap by the enemy.

"We're here to help, Hugo. There are evil people here who want to destroy life as we know it and we've called upon an army to help prevent that from happening, do you understand? And you—well, _you_ are all wearing the uniform of those very people that we are here to stop. Do you have some sort of explanation for that?"

"No, no, that's not it at all, you've got it all backwards, see?" Hugo shook his head then jumped at the sound of an explosion not too far behind them. "See, _I'm_ with the good guys, okay? I'm the one who's here with the people who want to make the world a better place, yeah? And you—you lot are with the ones who want to destroy it, which makes no sense to me because you're all decent people, I know that because I've grown up with you."

The Weasleys all gawked at each other in confusion for several moments longer before a realisation suddenly kicked in for Roxy.

If Hugo had been told ahead of the battle that he was on the 'good' side and people dressed like Roxy were on the 'bad' side then obviously he was going to believe that to be true. Any rational person would do the same. After all, everyone wants to think they're doing what's right and Hugo, whom Roxy knew had always felt overshadowed by his far more famous sister, was likely to convince himself tha the was doing the proper thing in order to allow himself to stand out from the rest of his family as a hero of a new age.

"Hugo," she said slowly, tilting her head slowly. "What did they tell you about us? What have you heard about us—good, bad, whatever, I need to know what you think we are."  
He cleared his throat then waved for them to follow him; the group ducked into a nearby alleyway before he answered Roxy's question in a hushed tone. "Roxy, something isn't right and I—I don't know what it is, but it makes absolutely no sense. They—they teamed us up with this lot called Starkid—utter monsters, the whole lot of them, but every time I come to that realisation, I convince myself that what they're doing is perfectly natural and I don't know why I'm doing it but it's like there's something that's in—in my brain telling me this is all fine, that this is how things are meant to be even though I can't think of a logical reason why."

"What, like mind control?" asked Chloe, eyes going wide. "Is there a voice in your head every time you get close to an argument about why you should leave and the little voice pops in and makes you just push out the questions eating at you?"

The male nodded earnestly, glad that someone understood what he was saying and could make a logical explanation out of his confused ramblings. "And we've got this Supreme, right? Old Asian lady, great way with words but even when I was listening to her talk, I knew that what she was saying wasn't right—yet I nodded my head the whole time and cheered along with everyone else as though it were perfectly natural."

"Mind control then, definitely," Chloe said, looking eager. "You're under the effect of it even now—that's why you can't give us names or anything of the sort. You may seem like you have free will, but at any moment, one of the members of Starkid could bend you to their will with a simple key phrase that's implanted in your head."

"What, like if I were to say Mr Weasley, _would you kindly_ step away from those people and come over here with me?" Trinh smirked at them from the mouth of the alleyway. Her eyes glowed eerily, making her seem just as demonic as the monster that she followed after.

Hugo, pulled by a force greater than himself, was compelled to Trinh's side, though he grimaced and dug his heels into the ground to avoid coming near her. But, try as he might, the power behind her words was too much for Hugo and he found himself walking towards the woman even as he wildly shook his head and looked behind him desperately, making eye contact for a brief second with Roxy before he was forced to face forward and hurry to Trinh's side with a twisted, painful expression on his face.

Just as Hugo was forced against his will to stand by Trinh, Roxy felt a similar tug to move towards the woman, though for entirely different reasons. All she could imagine, eyeing Trinh with an expression of intense hatred, she could sense her insides being eaten up by the desire to hit the bitch right in her stupid, smirking face.

So that was exactly what Roxy did.

She had entirely forgotten about her rule about avoiding excessive violence, far too consumed with pummelling the life out of Trinh; she ignored the yells behind her from the others, who were more than a little worried that Roxy had gone properly mad.

She continued assaulting her enemy, feeling the rush of bloodlust consumer her as she swung at Trinh's face and stomach, splitting the older woman's lip; the bones of her nose cracked painfully but Roxy refused to stop even for a second as she took her revenge.

What did it matter that everyone was yelling at her to get off of Trinh before Roxy would get herself hurt? The older woman wasn't even fighting back, just calmly looking up at Roxy even as blood pooled at the corner of her mouth; the gleefully mad look did not leave her eyes, a cold chuckle hunting Roxy and the others to their very cores.

Roxy stopped hitting her, unnerved by the unusually calm behaviour that Trinh was treating her with. "What the fuck is wrong with you, psycho bitch? Do you find all of this funny or something? Does it fucking amuse you to twist others to your own whims and desires? I bet you get off on all of this, don't you, psycho bitch? Huh? Answer me, Trinh! Do you fucking like to do this twisted shit, you fucking monster?"

Trinh chuckled again, shaking her head. "Ah, you must be Roxy. Such fiery spirit, such angry passion—certainly, I love it. But I'm afraid that you've made a terrible mistake here, a pretty fundamental mistake in fact."

"Stop babbling and answer the question, Trinh!" Roxy hit her again, her hand making contact with the shattered bones of Itawa's nose.

"I'm not Trinh," she said, grinning even through her bloody teeth and a broken nose.

"What?" Roxy gawked at her in bewilderment, trying to convince herself that she'd heard the woman incorrectly somehow. "What in the hell do you mean by that, you nutter?"

The woman gave Roxy a pitying look, taking the opportunity to push the smaller girl off of her and sit up, brushing her hand across her face and admiring the blood that streaked her skin. "What I mean—and what most people generally mean when they say they aren't someone—is that I'm not Trinh Itawa. I have never been, though I can see why you might think that I was. But, unfortunately, you're taking your frustration out on the wrong person. I'll accept your apology now if you don't mind. I have quite a bit to do."

"But if you aren't Trinh, then who are you?" Even Chloe was gaping at the fake Trinh in confusion; what was going on? Who the hell was this?

"Me? I'm her identical twin sister, Thanh-Ha." She smirked at the wide eyes her remark received. "Yeah, we look exactly alike, huh? It's gotten me into trouble before, but that's mostly because Trinh is a right twat and is always making enemies with other people, leaving me to clean up the mess on her behalf."

"You're lying!" snapped Roxy, shaking the other woman wildly, but instead of reacting, the woman who claimed not to be Trinh merely pushed Roxy's hands off of her in a calm manner and shrugged like it didn't really bother her that nobody seemed to believe her.

Standing motionless where he had been left, Hugo stared off into space before he suddenly started screaming, his eyes building and his skin flushing red. He ran at the wall of the building next to him, causing his nose to begin bleeding. Outside of their alleyway were more loud screams as the enemy—Starkid and not—fell to their knees and howled inhumanely. Even Thanh-Ha, panicking, backed away and huddled against the wall, whispering quietly and rocking back and forth on the heels of her feet.

"What's going on?" Roxy demanded of Chloe, who had fallen against Lucy, her eyes becoming unfocused and her breath speeding up. "Chloe, do you understand what all of this is? Why are they screaming? Have—have—" She didn't even want to ask for fear that Chloe would tell her that she was wrong and that this was the cry of victory.

Chloe slowly turned to face Roxy and nodded. "Trinh isn't falling back—this other girl isn't her, it can't be if she's become affected like everyone else. I don't know why the real Trinh has chosen to retreat, but—"

Thanh-Ha, Hugo, and Chloe all froze and in one voice, announced, "You think you have won." Outside of the alley, the rest of the army along with those who had left Starkid also spoke in emotionless, lifeless tones. "You think you have beaten us but this is only the beginning. One battle in the war, one drop in the bucket. We will come back stronger. We will defeat you, though you may convince yourself that we are weak. But in the future will come a day when you are unable to stand the might of our force. We are endless, we are forever—what is wisdom and rubies compared to an entire army? What is hope in the fact of a thousand fists fighting for your destruction? Though we pull back today, you may not claim victory, not now, not ever. Your end is inevitable, Roxy Weasley. Do not try to fight it."

Roxy bristled with anger at having been personally called out by Itawa and though all around them, the current Starkid members were running back to their leader and the battle truly was seemingly over, she could not get her intense hatred of Trinh to die down even for long enough to rationally consider the possible repercussions of what she was about to do—she just ran.

"Roxy, where the hell are you going?" Lily called out from back in the alley, but Roxy was too busy sprinting full speed down the street, following after the retreating enemy.

They moved like people possessed, incapable of controlling their own footsteps as they marched back to their base. No one seemed to notice Roxy behind them all, tailing the group with an expression of rage on her face. She wasn't trying to be stealthy but rather chose to run right down the middle of the road and pushed past anyone from her own side who tried to call out to her. Like those she followed, she was on a one-track mindset, entirely consumed by her desire to reach Trinh before the woman could run off once more, gone away somewhere that would leave Roxy powerless to do anything.

So she ran and ran, with shouts behind her telling Roxy to come back—there was only one picture left in her mind, consuming her from the inside: her hands wrapped around Trinh's neck, throttling the life out of her.

And then suddenly, there she was, standing out in the open street as her fellow soldiers swarmed past her. She waved to Roxy, remaining eerily calm as Roxy stopped in her tracks to glare at the older woman. She was unconcerned, raising her eyebrows mockingly at Roxy.

"Looking for me then, are you, Weasley?" she asked smoothly, holding up her hand so that a ring of fire curled up from the stone streets, surrounding the two of them. Members from both sides fathered at the edges of he circle, looking on at the two females. "Well, I suppose you found me—and them some." She nodded in the direction of her limping mirror, who had apparently been telling the truth about being Trinh's twin, and gave her sister a smirk. "Bruise you a bit, did the little brat?" Trinh asked Thanh-Ha.

The other Itawa daughter rolled her eyes. "Bugger is strong than she looks, Trinh. You may find it funny, but taking Weasley lightly is too big of a mistake for even an idiot as big as you. She's got a mean right hook, I'll certainly tell you that."

Roxy glanced between the two siblings, annoyance flashing through her before she finally grew tired of their chatter and sent a Bat-Bogey Hex towards Trinh. The Starkid leader, without even pausing, stepped out of harm's way, the spell flying past her and dissolving into steam once it touched the ring of fire.

"Careful, Weasley. I'm not as weak as my sister, believe me. I won't fall so easily, dropping to my knees and begging for mercy and forgiveness. I am strong than you, any of you!" She raised her voice, turning to glare at those who were watching, regardless of what side they fought for. "What could one little girl hope to do to stop me, the leader of the most powerful army in the history of humanity? What hope, what fantasy, deludes you into thinking that you—any of you—are even close to being a match for me?"

"How about you try saying that to the _real_ leader of Starkid, Trinh," said Sergio McClane from behind her. He and Phuong had appeared mid-speech and though Roxy's heart fluttered nervously to see the old woman, neither made any move to incapacitate Roxy, their attention focused wholly on Trinh.

The younger Itawa glared at her mother and Sergio then rolled her eyes, looking unimpressed. "I don't need you here, either of you. I am strong enough, powerful enough, to take down insolent little brats such as this." She waved a hand at Roxy. "Besides, none of this concerns you anyway, Mother, Sergio. I am doing perfectly fine on my own—I don't see why you made me call a retreat when we could still win this battle. Their whole army is right here! I don't even need your permission, I could end it all right now."

"You may be considered an adult, but my daughter, you still see the world as a child does, everything so black and white, always with an easy, violent solution. You don't understand yet that we must all make sacrifices and allow for small losses in order to pay off big wins in the future. Turning away from this battle—from this girl—is necessary, though none of us want to show such weakness to a mere child, of course. But it is still necessary in cases like this."

Bristling, Roxy stepped forward. "Why is it necessary? All you've done is cost people their lives and destroyed buildings. What is surrendering now going to get you?"

The older Itawa chuckled cruelly. "Surrender, Miss Weasley? I don't believe I ever said anything about surrendering. Now, Sergio, if you please, make haste and clean up your mess. I've grown dreadfully bored of the whinging of my daughter and this child she calls a foe."

He nodded, moving towards Trinh, causing fiery red light to encircle her wrists and ankles, covering them until you couldn't see the skin of her hands or the rubber of her shoes. Trinh hurled a number of insults at him until a third light sealed her mouth shut, leaving her to glare at him but become otherwise entirely incapacitated. Sergio smirked at the woman, giving her a mockingly sympathetic tap on the shoulder before turning away.

In the crowd, a young boy rushed forward, followed by Hannah—no, Elena—yelling, "No, August, don't! She isn't worth it!"

Without looking, Phuong Itawa caused the boy to fall to his knees, head bent towards the ground as though he were praying. "My daughter's precious pet, her little follower." She spat on the ground and August screamed, red welts covering his skin. "What a waste of perfectly good genetics. Some grandson you turned out to be."

He flew backwards, hitting a wall and crashing to the street, where he whimpered once and fell silent and motionless.

Phuong curled her lip at Roxy and her army, looking equal parts amused and disgusted at the sight of them. "Well, I believe that I hear Aurors coming, so I suppose I'll be taking my children and departing. But before I go, let me leave you all with one last gift. Now, would you kindly forget that I was ever here?" She waved her hands around at the crowd, loyal follower and enemy alike, before she and her entire army disappeared.

When Harry Potter and his team of Aurors appeared on the scene, it was to see more than a hundred bewildered people staring at a bound and gagged Trinh Itawa while bodies lined either side of the street stretching nearly a kilometre behind them.


	63. In the aftermath

As far as Roxy could remember—as she kept telling the brusque Auror questioning her—she had been fighting members of Starkid, the ones who had escaped from Azkaban, and stumbled across a bound Trinh Itawa only moments before the Aurors found them. She had no recollection of the young boy found not too far away, knocked unconscious and bleeding, nor did she have any explanation for Hugo's presence at the scene or the fact that he and roughly sixty other people wearing black robes and cloths over their faces were wandering around with bewildered expressions, at a loss of how they'd arrived at Diagon Alley.

She got the feeling that the Auror didn't believe her; his name was Archer Cauldwell, his cousin Gwenyth a dorm-mate of Roxy's at Hogwarts. He was much older than her, older even than Teddy, and Roxy knew from the second that he walked into the room that he had been a Gryffindor in his day from the way he swaggered into the room and scoffed at the sight of her, muttering under his breath that Weasleys in Slytherin weren't _real_ Weasleys.

"Why were you even _at_ Diagon Alley this morning?" he asked, shutting the door after seeing his co-worker off after they delivered the news that the younger Hogwarts students were all being sent back to school. He crossed his arms, looking her over sceptically. "What are you, fifteen, sixteen years old?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm turning twenty tomorrow, you dolt. You _know_ me—I was a housemate of Gwen's, you met me a few years ago for fuck's sake."

"Are you sure?" asked Archer, then shook his head, scowling. "Whatever, I don't care, just answer the question. There were almost four hundred people at Diagon Alley today, all of them fighting fairly heavily, and nearly fifty people are dead now. So I'll ask you one more time, what were you doing there, Miss Weasley? What purpose did you have?"

Roxy shrugged, doing her best to look nonchalant, though internally her mind was racing, wondering who she knew that had died. Surely all of those names that Lily had read off—Meera, Brennan, Lindsey—were not true. And her boyfriend, Thomas or whatever, could not have died because no one could recall having seen him at all. Roxy hadn't seen any of them since the battle ended but she had also been pulled away from her fellow 'soldiers' not long after Uncle Harry and the other Aurors arrived on the scene and hadn't much time to look around.

"You saw what happened, didn't you, Archer? You saw the bodies and Trinh Itawa and everything else. What do you think I was doing there? Certainly wasn't there on holiday, was I? Running around, having a laugh at everything while people die all around me? Don't be stupid, Archer, you know why I was there, even if you are playing at me being a child."

"I'd prefer that you call me Auror Cauldwell if you don't mind, Miss Weasley. You may know Gwenyth—a cousin I have not spoken to in over a year, by the way—but that doesn't give you the right to speak to me like I'm just one of your mates. Not to mention that I'm not an idiot; I know why you were here today, obviously, but I am required to go through these questions, as per my training. This is simply just part of the process so I'd appreciate if you would make things easier by answering the damn question."

"If I do, will you answer some questions of mine? I've not seen anyone since you brought me in here and I need to know who's still alive."

He looked at her sharply for several long moments, clearly deciding whether it was worth it to give into Roxy. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows at him, conveying the clear message that she would only be as friendly as he was. Slytherins did not back down when they wanted information and Roxy was no exception.

"Fine," consented Archer, "but I get to ask the first question, do you understand me, Miss Weasley? And if your question goes against protocol, I have the right to refuse to answer you, for the sake of my job."

"Makes sense to me, Archie. What's your first question?"

* * *

Her birthday was a solemn affair, with very little to really celebrate outside of the fact that no Weasleys had lost their life in what was being called a 'foolish attempt to recreate the Battle of Hogwarts, run by some overly enthusiastic young people with too much time on their hands'. No one from the media even hinted that the whole event could have possibly been anything more than a publicity stunt or a cry for attention, one that had gone horribly wrong.

Roxy very nearly cancelled her subscription to _The Daily Prophet_ three separate times in frustration. They hadn't bothered to mention the names of all those that died—Meera, Brennan, the young Shia, and fifty others, all growing cold as their bodies were shipped to their families to be buried or cremated.

Lindsey, unlike in Lily's premonitions, had survived, though she was badly scarred all over her face and hands and had been put under the Cruciatus Curse for longer than any human could sustain and still remain sane. She would most likely never be leaving the Janus Thickey Ward at St Mungo's, nor recover her mind, a fate that might be considered worse than death.

It was painful, watching the older girl wander around her bed and mutter incoherently to herself while Roxy and Lucy looked on, feeling guilt, the urge to do something more to help Lindsey filling them, though the Healers assured the girls that there was nothing that could be done but allow Lindsey to live out the rest of her days in relative peace.

Later that day, as Roxy stared down at a piece of birthday cake, feeling too numb to eat, the question came up as to whether or not they would attend any of the funerals of the friends that they had lost. Her stomach churned just thinking about it, but it was clear what the right thing to do was, so she nodded at Lucy and wondered if this was how her father had felt after his brother and friends died all those years ago and he was left to see them buried.

"We owe it to people like Meera and Brennan. I mean, if it hadn't been for us, they would probably still be alive. At the very least, we should honour their memories by being there in those last moments, don't you think, to respect what they did?" she asked, though found herself unable to look up at anyone else in the room.

Lily, sitting on the kitchen counter of Roxy's flat, made a face at the idea of dead bodies, but also agreed that it was necessary. "We all said so much shite to Brennan all the time and now he's dead. Did any of us even bother to really get to know him before we made all of the quick decisions about what kind of person he was? I mean, who here really got to know Brennan, huh?"

"We'd been dating for over a month," replied Tilly quietly, not glancing up from her own plate. "I kept telling him that I didn't want to tell anyone about us because I wasn't ready but the truth was that I was scared about what other people would think about me. I was almost embarrassed to admit to myself that we were going out. I'd only ever dated Miles before this and it was totally different because Miles was respected by everyone else, more or less, but he was also daft enough to do whatever I said. But Brennan was...well, you all know what he was."

Roxy gawked at her old Hogwarts nemesis and felt, for the first time, true pity for the other girl. Though she had broken up with Kieran and had no desire to be with him ever again, she could only imagine the heartbreak she would feel if he had died in yesterday's battle—and Roxy was only an _ex-girlfriend_ , a friend.

Luckily, Kieran had been spared from death, as had the rest of the members of the Circle. They were the fortunate survivors, or, depending on how some might see it, the unfortunate who were left behind to suffer through the memories of those they had lost.

Though Roxy had never been big on celebrating her birthday, her twentieth seemed especially worse off, considering that they were still suffering from the aftershock of the day before. The reality of what had happened still refused to settle in more than twenty-four hours after the fact, leaving Roxy jumpy at every little noise.

The previous night, she had tossed and turned for hours trying to sleep before finally giving into the bout of insomnia and began pacing around her bedroom. She was haunted by the faces of those she had led into battle and though the sun was up at the moment and the day fairly calm, Roxy could still hear the screams of the dying and felt blood on her hands and arms no matter how often she ran off to wash. _There's no escape,_ whispered the little voice in her head. _They'll haunt your thoughts forever as punishment for what you allowed to happen to them. You ought to leave before you let anyone else die._

"Are you okay, Rox?" asked Lucy, glancing over at her cousin in concern, furrowing her brow to see the panicked expression on Roxy's face and the way her chest was moving up and down with considerable force as she struggled to squash down the beginning stages of a panic attack. Lucy knew what those looked like, having struggled with them for five years.

"I'm fine," Roxy tried to assure Lucy, though the auburn-haired girl didn't look convinced. To avoid making eye contact with anyone else, she focused on shoving an oversized bite of cake into her mouth and fell quiet. She would handle this situation like she had handled losing Freddie and Dad, by avoiding her feelings until it no longer hurt to think about.

It was barely even noon and already she was an emotional mess, between seeing Meera's dead body at the morgue, the mentally unhinged Lindsey who didn't recognise them, and now trying to eat a far too large slice of cake and pretend like none of this was bothering her in the slightest when in reality she felt close to a complete mental collapse.

Roxy sighed quietly, listening to Jo and Aniya discuss what would be happening to Trinh and her strange little sidekick. There was something absurd about the boy that tugged at Roxy's thoughts but when she couldn't think of what it might be, she shrugged and continued tuning into the other girls' conversation.

"Well, obviously her mum can't defend her now, not if she wants to maintain her reputation with the Wizengamot. No doubt she'll make a big show of disowning her daughter in front of everyone and claim that she had nothing to do with Trinh and that the actions of her daughter don't reflect the goals of Starkid and whatnot." At Aniya's astonished expression, Jo explained, "My dad is a lawyer with the Wizengamot and before that, my grandfather worked defence for several known Death Eaters both in the '80s and after the War in '98. Didn't make him wildly popular with the general public, but I don't think my granddad's ever cared what the general public thinks of him. Because of them, though, I know far too well how the legal system works."

"And the boy, August Batts?" Aniya asked curiously. "What do you suppose will become of him? He's not even of age yet, can they really try him like an adult?"

Jo shrugged, unconcerned about Batts' criminalisation being morally acceptable or not. "He committed a crime with full knowledge of what he was doing. As far as _I'm_ concerned, that makes him guilty enough to prosecute—twelve years old or no, if you're going to conspire to murder and political unrest, then you ought to be punished."

"Dad feels the same way, though he won't admit it until he's sure that being so legally aggressive towards a minor won't make him look bad," said Lucy breezily from where she was sitting, though her gaze was still training on Roxy. "That's how he is about a lot of things, though, holding back judgement until he gets an idea of how the public feels about it."

"Yeah, well, your dad's a prick and a coward and I'd sooner vote a house elf into office than him if that's how he plans to run things. Suppose another war—not what happened yesterday, but something even bigger—were to happen? Would he withhold comment until he's gotten word on how the votes choose to mourn?"

Though a few people gave Jo shocked or annoyed looked, Lucy nodded in agreement, glad someone understood. "But I'll still vote for him," she admitted. "He's my dad, after all, and I should support him even if I don't agree with him, shouldn't I?" Lucy looked over to her Weasley cousins. "Loyalty to family and all that?"

"I wouldn't vote for my dad if I thought he was being a knob," replied Jo casually, smirking. "But then again, I'm not like you Weasleys. Even Roxy would fall in line to stay 'loyal to the family', right, Rox? Even though you know he's wrong, you'll still vote for him."

Roxy, somewhat caught off-guard, considered her prat of an uncle. He was a weak-willed coward who changed his views on important issues such as muggle relations any time that the public mood shifted one way or another. He struck her as being a sad, middle-aged man desperate to fulfil a lifelong goal that he's long forgotten the reason for why he was chasing after it.

But yes, she told Jo and the others; she'd still vote for Uncle Percy in May because he was family and at least he wasn't maliciously useless. Not to mention that she didn't really care enough to bother looking into the politics of the other candidates, regardless of their stance.

"But will the Wizengamot really convict a child and send them to Azkaban?" Aniya asked again, turning once more to Jo. "I mean, shouldn't there be some sort of law against that kind of thing? Surely a boy, a child, isn't deserving of Azkaban at such a young age, no matter what he's done? He's still a kid!"

"They won't send him to Azkaban, calm down Aniya. There are plenty enough laws that would never allow that, not to mention that people would pitch a bloody fit about it at just the mention of throwing a youth into prison. No, what'll happen is he'll be tried the same as any other criminal and if he's found guilty—which I have no doubt he will be, mind you—then the Ministry will take custody of him until he's seventeen, at which point he'll be tried and evaluated again. If he's found to be unfit for human society, he'll be thrown into Azkaban along with Itawa. Otherwise, he'll be treated like any other ward of the state and be released, sans wand."

"He won't have a wand? How can they justify that?"

"Probationary period until his twenty-first, where he'll have to prove that he's properly rehabilitated and poses no threat to anyone, at which point he'll be given the right to carry a wand again, assuming he really even needs one to do magic. But they certainly won't give him his old one, of course. _That_ will be kept as permanent Ministry evidence, again assuming that he currently has a wand. It's what they probably would have done to you and your sisters if they hadn't been kidnapped since your father trained you to be weapons."

"And Itawa?" Roxy asked, leaning forward and focusing on Jo, her eyes glittering with curiosity. In her head was the fantasy of Trinh being thrown into a dark cell and never seen again.

"I've got no doubt that between her mother's rejection and the general circumstances in which she was caught, it would require a damn good lawyer to keep her from seeing the inside of a prison cell. And then there's the question of how she'd pay any lawyer at all regardless of how rubbish they may be. I wonder if anyone will even want to take her case." She turned to look at Aniya, mildly surprised by the girl's interest. "To be totally honest, I knew Roxy would be ignorant of all of this because she never paid attention when I talked about it at school, but I would have expected you to know all of this stuff, considering the situation with your dad being what it is."

Jo either ignored or didn't notice the disgusted look on Aniya's face as she scowled at her flatmate; Jo seemed entirely oblivious to the hidden insult in her words, that Aniya knew nothing about her own situation.

"I was already on the run from Starkid by the time that my father was prosecuted, so I wasn't really around to watch the whole process," snapped Aniya. "But thanks for reminding me that my father's an imprisoned lunatic, as though I don't get enough mockery from my colleagues any time that my name comes up in conversation."

The Slytherin girl shrugged, taking a bit of cake. "Okay, so your dad's a nutter criminal and my dad helps nutter criminals stay out of Azkaban. So what? Roxy's dad is dead, Lucy's is a power mongering politician, Lily's is too famous for his own good, and Tilly's just really likes plants for some reason. Honestly, though, who really gives a shite about what your dad did? There are a million and one other ways to judge people and you're going to get hung up about what people think about your goddamn son of a bitch father?"

Roxy wasn't sure why, but she suddenly found herself chuckling uncontrollably at Jo's words, wondering what her own father would think of the friends she'd made in the years after his death. She wondered if she weren't perhaps going mad, having lost her mind after everything that had happened not just yesterday, but over the past fifteen months.

"You okay, Rox?" Lucy asked again, sobering her cousin up enough that she was able to gulp down a glass of water and try to force out a sane and rational sentence, all the while struggling to maintain a positive expression on her face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Just still on edge from the battle, you know? The whole thing's made me a bit jumpy is all. But I'm fine, totally fine." Roxy smiled widely at the other females, though internally she was half laughing her head off and half screaming for someone to notice the tension around her mouth and eyes.

But no one did, or at least if they did, they didn't call her out on it. Instead, they turned back to their conversation, not paying any attention to the way Roxy fell quiet and stared down at the remainder of the slice of cake in her lap. Of all the birthdays, this one had to be one of the worst she'd had yet, all of the potential feelings of celebrating her twentieth wholly smothered by the despair of loss and the anxiety of what was yet to come.

Roxy set the cake aside, putting her hands on the knees of her jeans, and wondered what her friends and cousins would think if she just started screaming loudly as a means of reflecting the feeling of terror that seemed to be eating Roxy up from the inside.

She shook her head and pretending like she didn't want to tear her own hair out, shrieking and crying until her lungs fell to bits. She smiled, pretending like she had never heard the name Trinh Itawa in her life and had no idea about those that had died at Diagon Alley. With luck, none of this would hurt again very soon.

* * *

She had been tossed into a holding cell in the lower floors of the Ministry, with no one to talk to. There was a single Auror standing guard at the end of the cell block, but he only silently shoved Trinh into her temporary home before resuming his post. That had been almost twenty-six hours ago and she had still been given no food or drink nor been allowed to go to the bathroom. Trying to sleep in order to pass the time had done nothing since the lights of the hallway refused to turn off or even dim in the slightest.

Though she screamed and swore at her guard, he remained in his spot, dutifully ignoring whatever insults she hurled his way.

Trinh thought she was likely to go mad before her trial—assuming she was even going to be receiving a trial rather than just being tossed into Azkaban or summarily executed. Every time she tried to remind the Auror that she deserved a lawyer or at least a drink of water, he would turn away and scowl that much harder.

As the twenty-seventh hour since her arrest approached, the door to the cell block opened, causing the Auror to snap to attention and the lights to shine even more brightly. The man who had detained her, Mr Harry Potter himself, came sweeping through the door, briefly muttering into the guard's ear before he beckoned to someone on the other side of the door.

Her youngest sibling, Kim-Ly, came in behind Mr Potter, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the cells, where long gone prisoners had urinated on themselves out of desperation or fear and then spent days afterwards sitting in their own filth as they awaited trial.

Trinh was determined to not become like one of those people no matter how many days she had to stay here. She would not show weakness or subjugation. Mr Potter would get no confession from her, not even if he tortured her. If she were to go to Azkaban, it would be on her own terms and no one else's.

Kim-Ly pushed past the Head Auror, hurrying over to where Trinh sat calmly on her highly uncomfortable bed. Mr Potter followed behind at a much slower pace, an odd look on his face as he noticed the edge to Trinh, the way the air around her crackled as it sucked all of her magic out of her body, even now, when most prisoners would have been entirely emptied. She paid him no attention, though, turning instead to focus on Kim-Ly.

"Oh, Trinh!" she cried, rushing forward to place her hands on the cell bars, wrapping her thing fingers around the cold metal. "What have you gotten yourself into now, Trinh? Mummy is terribly upset about all of this, she says we're not to talk to you at all, but I simply couldn't stay away from my beloved sister! After all, you _are_ my oldest sister, I can't just leave you here to rot, no matter what Mummy may say."

Translation: Mum had disavowed Trinh, cast her away from the family, and sent Kim-Ly to warn Trinh against speaking out negatively about Phuong or any part of Starkid when her trial was called. It was a clear message if one knew how to read between the lines like the two sisters did. Trinh was meant to be the sacrificial lamb, the scapegoat who would take all of the responsibility onto herself. Mum would get off without any punishment while Trinh would be tossed into a dark cell in Azkaban, never to see the light of day again for as long as she lived.

She eyed Kim-Ly sharply, taking in her sister's overly happy smile and the way she kept rocking back and forth on her heels. Then, slowly, Trinh nodded in understanding, allowing Kim-Ly to let out a small sigh of gratitude, glad she would not be punished upon her return to wherever it was that Starkid was currently hiding out.

Mr Potter, behind the youngest Itawa sister, raised his right hand slightly to get their attention. "Hello, Miss Itawa, I don't know if you remember me from yesterday or the incident back in July. I'm Harry Potter, Head Auror, which means I'm in charge of keeping you here until a trial can be arranged. Have you eaten since your arrival or had anything to drink? We want to make sure that you stay healthy while you stay with us, which of course means we'll need to check up on your well-being fairly regularly."

His message was also very clear—Mr Potter would not let her escape custody or her trial by any means, including death, not that she would choose such a route.

"Food, water, and a trip to the lavatory certainly do help to keep a prisoner alive," she told him coldly, scowling in the direction of the guard, who avoided making eye contact. "I've not even had so much as a word thrown my way since your friend tossed me in here yesterday afternoon. Perhaps you should keep someone in here with me who actually cares whether I live or die—or, I suppose, just leave me here to become dehydrated and famished until I die, giving you no one to take the fall for what happened yesterday."

"Trinh," her sister hissed warningly, shaking her head as Mr Potter frowned and turned to look over his shoulder a the guard with a disapproving look, which at least caused the younger male to appear ashamed of what he had done. Or, at least ashamed at being caught.

"I shall personally ensure that all of your needs are taken care of and look for someone to watch after you, but you must also understand that you are still a prisoner here and there are certain rules that you will be expected to comply with while under my guard. I obviously will allow no harm to come to you but I will also not allow you to try to hurt me or my Aurors without receiving appropriate punishment. Visits like this one today," he nodded at Kim-Ly, "are a luxury and any misconduct will result in you losing such privileges."

Trinh glared at him, wondering what Mr Potter would do if she were to suddenly lunge at him right then and start slamming his head against the bars; her eyes flashed angrily before returning to their normal cold grey and she nodded, forcing all of the fury out of her in favour of giving her captor a sickly sweet smile. He would crack first, Trinh promised herself. Mr Potter would be the one to give in and succumb to whatever she demanded of him.

"Of course, sir," she said pleasantly, widening her smile that much more. "I will do whatever you tell me to. I only wish that I could stay here with you forever and never have to face the real world again. I've done so many terrible things that haunt my dreams and I'd much rather stay here in the safety of my little cell until the day I die."

Mr Potter didn't reply, only looking at her with a smile that reached all the way to his unnervingly green eyes as he listened to Trinh spin her lies. She couldn't tell if he believed them at all or if he was playing his own little game with her.

"Well, I really must be going now, Miss Itawa. It was nice establishing an understanding with you," he said before turning away and walking up the corridor towards the door. Kim-Ly waved good-bye to Trinh before rushing after him, the two visitors departing once more, leaving her in contemplative, frustrated silence.

If they thought she'd go quietly, the rest of the world had another thing coming. Trinh Itawa did _not_ play by anyone's rules but her own.

* * *

"What do you think?" Teddy asked Harry later that day after he had escorted the girl who claimed to be Kim-Ly Itawa out of the Aurors' offices. "Was she really solely responsible for all those deaths—her, a boy, and an army of maybe twenty people at most, a battle that ended with only two survivors on her own side along with ten bodies that don't seem to belong to either side, not to mention people like Hugo, who have no recollection of being there?"

Harry drew his cloak around him, sighing quietly. "I know that's what all the witnesses say and there are no signs of memory modification, but I simply don't buy that all of this could have been done by such a small team. There are people who escaped form Azkaban and St Mungo's whose bodies were not found amongst the dead. Where have they gone? And to say that Phuong Itawa and her little 'family' aren't involved in Trinh's schemes? I don't believe it in the slightest, there's no bloody way she isn't connected."

"And the girl from today, Kim or whatever?" Teddy continued, furrowing his brow. "She claimed to be an Itawa and she certainly does look like the Itawas we have on file, but to be honest, I thought Trinh was the only child."

The older male shrugged. "Records do show only one charge under the name of Itawa born in the last forty years, and certainly, none who were admitted to Hogwarts. Similar situation with that man, Rafael McClane—one charge, no record of Hogwarts, yet he was legally married three times in his life who all died under mysterious circumstances. I remember submitting requests to investigate what had happened to them, considering his first wife was listed as having died 'in childbirth', but as with most projects that I tried to start in relation to Itawa, my investigation was shut down fairly quickly, along with orders to never bring it up again."

"So where do we go from here?"

"The same as we've been going since July since I've been struggling towards for the past fifteen years. We continue building evidence against the Itawas and hope that we can call Trinh to her trial before they're able to come after me."

Teddy frowned at his godfather, wondering if there would really come a day—and so soon—that one of the most famous and well-respected wizards in modern history would be placed behind bars simply for trying to do the right thing. It simply didn't make any sense to punish a man who had spent fifteen years struggling to shut down a group that brought only suffering and torture to the world and he couldn't imagine the Wizengamot truly going through with it.

"Will they really charge you, do you think, Harry? What evidence do they even actually have to accuse you of doing anything other than your job? I mean, you're supposed to keep us all safe and doesn't that include stopping groups like Starkid from hurting people, especially children? Would they truly try to punish you for that?"

"I fear that as long as I stand against Phuong Itawa and everything she stands for, regardless of whether or not she'll admit that I'm chasing her, then she will not slow down in her desperate attempts to discredit me." Harry shrugged, not looking too bothered despite his choice of words. "They have no evidence me but I also having nothing against them besides, perhaps, the word of Trinh and it is unlikely that she'll be willing to speak out against her own mother. Besides that is the fact that Phuong Itawa has had the Wizengamot in her pocket for years; I'll have one hell of a time working past that to convince them that I've done nothing wrong."

"But you _haven't_ done anything wrong!" The younger male threw his hands into the air, frustrated. "All you've done is your bloody job, how can they do this to you when you're only trying to help and be a good person?"

Harry shrugged again, amused by how outspoken his godson was, even at thirty-one years of age. "It's out of our hands, Teddy, so there's no point in fussing about it now. All we can hope for is that either Trinh will speak in my defence or we can get her behind bars before her mother can use the girl to her advantage against me. Other than that, though, we're powerless to do anything to prevent all of this from happening."

It was obvious Teddy didn't care for the passive approach from the way his hair became prickly and dark, but Harry was right and all they could do now was wait for the worst and hope for the best possible outcome of all of this.

* * *

Roxy stared down in silence at the thirty-three year old body of Meera Kosaraju for a long moment before she moved on, allowing for Lily to step up behind her and observe the corpse of their departed friend. The twenty year old crossed her arms over her chest, feeling a burning sensation inside of her.

They had been informed ahead of time that Meera would be given a traditional Hindu funeral and Albus had picked up white outfits for the whole Circle so that they wouldn't stand out-"I've been to a Hindu funeral before," was his only explanation. There were lots of other people around, Meera's family and friends, who were either lined up to observe the corpse on her simple bedding or giving their condolences to Mr and Mrs Kosaraju.

"You were a friend of hers, then?" asked the youngest of Meera's siblings, a girl about the same age as Lucy who had introduced herself as Pratima. She looked a lot like Meera, with the same round face and brown eyes. Roxy noticed the dimples in her cheek that was also reminiscent of Meera, apparent even through the sorrow on her face. She gave Roxy a despondent smile. "Meera had lots of friends. Lots of wizards and witches."

Roxy nodded slowly, unsure how to respond. "We were, uh, maybe not the closest—I only met her back in November—but Meera meant a lot to me for the short time that we did know each other. I—I'm sorry for everything that happened with your sister, she'll be missed by a lot of people. She was, er, a really great Healer and an even better person. I don't really know what could be said or done to accurately explain what she meant and I could never apologise enough times for what happened to make up for my role in her death, though I truly am sorry."

Pratima nodded like she didn't quite understand what Roxy was trying to say. "Thank you for your kinds words and for your presence here today. I know Meera would have loved to see us all gathered here under different circumstances but she has moved onto the next cycle of existence and has hopefully moved into a new life devoid of suffering." Her voice now dropped away any image of personal connection and she continued to smile politely at Roxy for a second longer than felt appropriate, leaving them both with no choice but to nod awkwardly at each other and move onto the next person.

Roxy kept going, giving similarly apologetic messages and receiving responses devoid of any life or interest. She wasn't sure if the Kosaraju family was simply going through the motions because they were busy mourning or if they truly didn't care what she was saying, seeing her as just one more mourner, one more hand to shake and head to bob along with as they exchanged exclamations of sorrow and shared memories of a woman who had been taken from this life too soon.

Being non-religious—as most wizards and witches were—Roxy had no real understanding of Hindu culture so the repeated focus on Meera not truly being dead but merely moving to the 'next cycle of existence' didn't make sense to her since, as far as Roxy had been led to believe all of her life, when someone died, they stayed dead. So unless the Kosaraju was saying that Meera would come back as a spirit somehow, she figured it was probably better to leave all of the talk about being dead or not to someone who understood it better.

After she had spoken to Mr and Mrs Kosaraju, Roxy walked a little ways past the other funeral guests, shoving her hands into the pockets of her dress. She kicked slightly at the dirt road that led to where they had Apparated over, wondering to herself how many people would die before people like Trinh or monsters like the Faceless One would be taken down for good.

Wrapping his arms around her, Albus gave Roxy a quick, friendly squeeze. "How are you feeling about all of this, huh, Rox? Is it eating you up inside as much as it is to me or have you already compartmentalised and desensitised yourself to the whole situation?"

She shrugged, not sure if she would be able to give an honest answer; shutting down her feelings had become an almost daily occurrence in her life, becoming a constant battle over the last six years between her emotions and her desire to remain aloof and cold.

"We're responsible for all of this, Al," she said, twisting her head to look up at him. "We helped to kill a woman who was, in every sense of the word, a wonderful and lovely person who never did anything wrong in her life. No, maybe we didn't say the curse or raise our hand to her, but it's because we included her in the Circle and allowed to her fight alongside us that she's dead now. We have to hold onto that responsibility."

"And does that upset you? Does that make you want to ball up your fists and wish you could change it all, do things differently?"

Roxy, pausing only long enough to consider the question, shook her head even though she knew that what she felt inside was far more complicated than what she was saying. "People are going to die no matter what we do, or at least they will for as long as we keep this war going. It may seem easier to look for ways to prevent that from happening but if we insist that fighting is necessary, then death becomes inevitable. I wish Meera hadn't died but I don't wish that I had died in her place; I'm not some kind of reckless hero or anything, certainly not the kind person who sacrifices herself for others."

He nodded, expecting her answer. "Perhaps my father's gung-ho attitude to always jump in save others—which has certainly inspired copycats, such as Isaac—is not the wisest way to go about things. I don't agree with everything you've said but I do at least see what you're telling me and I can acknowledge that your point is valid."

They continued to chat quietly for several minutes longer while the other members of the Circle finished giving their condolences to the Kosaraju family and came to stand with the two cousins at the mouth of the road.

Lily, frowning as she came up to Albus and Roxy, looked between the two, brow furrowed. "There's only fruit and flowers—and making you _stare_ at a dead body? Is this just how _all_ funerals work or only the Hindu ones? I've only ever been to Weasley funerals before since I'm not as cultured as you are, Albus, and it's definitely not like this, is it? Like wearing white and all the ceremonial speeches with her dad and brothers and having her body laying on sheets in the open? Did you—" her voice lowered in volume, "—know that after we leave, they'll burn her corpse and scatter the ashes everywhere along with a special prayer?"

Her brother rolled her eyes at the scandalised tone to Lily's words. "It's a Hindu funeral, Lils. They do things differently from what you're used to, but that doesn't make it abnormal."

"I'm only saying that it's unusual, you don't have to be rude about it when all I'm doing is stating my opinion. You always do this, acting like everything I say and do is somehow jus the most disrespectful, awful, terrible thing you've ever heard. I mean, you _always_ treat me like this, as though I'm the literal worst!"

The younger Potter siblings began arguing with each other and Roxy, feeling uncomfortable, walked away from them, quietly murmuring to herself about what they would have to do next, where the battle for humanity would have to go. A glance around her showed that the Circle had clearly shrunk since they last met, having lost in some way three members. Who else here would die? Would she lose any more friends before they next met? Would there be fewer people in six months? A year? Would _Roxy_ be the next to leave?

She shook her head, reminding herself that none of it mattered enough to stress out about at the moment, so far in advance. After all, they would all die eventually and in the matter of trying to stop a psychopathic daemon, people would die faster than proportionally expected. If it were her or Albus or Aniya then there was nothing that could be done to avoid the situation. People would die no matter how much effort was given to try to keep such a fate from happening and it would be best to simply learn to live with that fact of existence rather than build herself up about it.

But as hard as she tried to remind herself of that truth, Roxy could not keep the voice in the back of her head from screaming maniacally and reminding her that everything—all of the deaths—were entirely her fault.


	64. Drinks and a chat

Going into work for the first time since the battle left Roxy uncertain. She didn't even really know if she still had a job considering how much emphasis the company placed on public appearance, but as neither she, Rose, Desmond, or Aniya had received any sort of notice demanding their resignation, the quartet decided that it was most likely safe to get ready for their jobs as though it were any normal day and they hadn't been in the newspapers for the past week.

Starsha watched closely as Roxy and Aniya traipsed past her into the interns' quarters but said nothing, not even a comment that they had arrived to work earlier than normal. She merely crossed her arms over her chest and bobbed her head in the direction of their stations, indicating that the two girls best begin working.

Since everyone in the company had been given their yearly evaluations and the newest batch of interns needed somewhere to work, McGregor and his cronies had been bumped up to full partners and there had been a mad scramble to claim their stations amongst those who remained.

Roxy and Aniya had chosen two stations on the right wall about midway through the room. Though they would be yelled at if they were caught chatting to each other during work hours, the girls had discovered a way to pass notes by way of silent Banishing charms; so far, Starsha had not picked up on their behaviour, though she kept warning the whole room to save their conversations for outside of work or else she would move particularly chatty station neighbours to opposite ends of the room to prevent slacking off.

The two girls nodded agreeably any time Starsha brought it up and continued writing notes in any spare moment they could find between researching and making potions.

Though Roxy greatly enjoyed working with Aniya and Desmond—who was located on the other side of his girlfriend—and she got along well enough with the newest group of interns, she could not shake the feeling that there was something _different_ about work now and whatever it was felt a lot bigger than the usual anxiety that came with more responsibility. It was also much more than the battle hanging over her as these feelings had been plaguing Roxy ever since she received the letter that allowed her to begin her second year at Henrik's.

"Hey Roxanne, Aniya," said Maisie Finch-Fletchley, already set up to the right of Roxy's station. They didn't know the girl very well though she was always very upbeat and bubbly, the unusual best friend of Jan Mullins, a sullen boy who never said anything more optimistic than a vague comment on the dreariness of the weather.

Weirdest of all about Maisie was that she was dating Lorcan Scamander, which had earned her a number of dirty looks from the other female interns at Henrik's who had massive crushes on the blond—yet Maisie didn't seem to realise that a few girls practically hated her as she was far too happy, being an overly peppy and energetic all the time and totally oblivious to everyone else's opinion about her.

"Hello, Maisie," the two older girls said at the same time, not wanting to get caught up in a lengthy conversation about Maisie's weekend; they ducked into their respective cubicles and pretended to be busy, though in truth they were already silently sending each other notes about the bizarrely casual attitude of everyone at work, considering what had happened last week.

Sitting down, Roxy placed her head on the desk after sending off another note to Aniya. She took a deep breath, wondering if she would be able to get through the whole day without having some sort of mental breakdown since she'd spent much of the last three days either attending funerals, being questioned over and over again by the Ministry, and then rushing from the public view to find somewhere quiet where she could put her head in between her knees and convince herself that she didn't want to jump from a very tall building.

After all, as she kept insisting, it was important to keep a rational mind in this sort of situation and keep the thought that there was nothing that could be done to save people like Meera. It wasn't like anyone had seen a Time Turner in nearly forty years, so no matter how she could like to change things, it would be easier to simply move forward and prepare for the next battle that would no doubt be coming.

But as much as she knew that to be the smartest and psychologically easiest solution, and as much as she was trying to live by that way of life, Roxy could not fully put behind her the fear of what she could not control.

The past three nights had been spent with a pillow over her head and covered in blankets, Silencing Charms placed around her room to keep Jo and Aniya from coming into her room. She often rolled off from her bed to the floor, waking herself once more and upon climbing back into bed spent up to an hour trying to fall back into a restless sleep.

 _How are you feeling?_ asked the newest note from Aniya, making Roxy look up from her table. She blinked at the parchment, unsure how to respond to such a loaded question. Roxy honestly couldn't even tell how she felt let alone put it into a logical statement and she was sure that Aniya didn't want to deal with a long, rambling, incoherent message.

 _I'm fine_ , she wrote back, then turned to look at her day's work, sighing as she steeled herself for a long day trying to hold back the desire to scream. Instead, she put on a bright smile in case anyone looked at her, pretending like everything _was_ perfectly fine.

* * *

"Do you want to get drinks?" Maisie asked in a chirpy voice as she swung her cloak over her shoulders. "I know we've not talked much, but I figure that we could all hang out together outside of a work situation and get to know each other a little better."

Roxy, Aniya, and Desmond exchanged somewhat uncomfortable glances but couldn't find any arguments against grabbing a Butterbeer or two with Maisie and the scowling Jan, who had stuffed his hands into his pockets and leant against the door frame of the interns' quarters, watching them with eyes devoid of any signs of emotion.

It was Desmond who nodded and replied in a friendly voice, "Yeah, sure, Maisie, we'd love to grab a drink with you, wouldn't we, guys?" He turned frantically to the other two, who bobbed their heads in rapid succession, grinning wildly with false enthusiasm. "In fact, I know a great place called Spellman's Pub that serves a whole range of drinks at fairly cheap prices and they only kick you out if you get too rowdy. The whole place is staffed by house elves so they simply switch out who's working whenever the need arises in order to keep the place going all the time."

"Oh." Maisie blushed and stammered for a few moments, looking thoroughly put out. "Perhaps we could go to the Leaky Cauldron instead?"

"Why? Do you have something against house elves or something?"

"Oh—oh no!" She looked horrified at the thought. "I'm simply—it's just that I was the leader of the SPEW at Hogwarts since fifth year and we're against the forced labour of house elves no matter the occupation, you know?" She gripped Jan's arm. "Jan here was my second in command, just lovely at the job. It's how I met Lorcan, too, when he joined the club to help further our cause."

Roxy forced herself to hold back the desire to snicker at Maisie's naivete; if the girl wanted to believe that Lorcan Scamander had any interest in the well-being of house elves, then Roxy wasn't going to burst her bubble.

"Well..." Desmond trailed off, eyes unfocused for several long seconds before he regained his composure. "The house elves are paid, if that makes it better, and they get holidays, don't they, Roxy? You aunt was the one who had a big hand in all of the equal rights for house elves stuff a few years back, wasn't she?"

She genuinely had no clue what her aunt had done or how the pub's house elves were treated—nor did she particularly care—but Roxy could feel her legs beginning to shake and the desire to scream was coming back, so she choked out her most convincing, "Oh yeah, absolutely. Paid for hours, holidays, overtime pay, shifts. You name it, they have it."

Maisie didn't look wholly unconvinced, nodding uncertainly. "Alright, I suppose we could try Spellman's. After all, Mummy always tells me it's a good idea to try new things, and that's certainly true, isn't it?"

The others hurriedly agreed and they Apparated as a group to Diagon Alley before making their way to the pub; it was late enough in the evening that the moon was visible though the sun had not yet finished setting. Considering how popular Spellman's was amongst the under-thirty crowd, it was likely that there would already be a number of booths and tables overflowing with rambunctious drunks, but it would still be a while yet before anyone became so intoxicated that they attempted to drag out a few notes from the self-playing band, making such awful noises that everyone would clap their hands over their ears while cats yowled along outside.

It was a good place to if you wanted a drink but didn't want a lot of attention put on you; Roxy and Jo had spent many summers hanging around the bar, conning drinks off of older guys since the house elves wouldn't give the two underage girls anything stronger than a very strict two Butterbeer limit before cutting them off for the night.

When the group arrived inside, Maisie looked around uncomfortably, noticing tha the place was indeed fully staffed by house elves, with only one large, surly bouncer and a dark-skinned man whose face was obscured by a hat as he hid in the shadows behind the bar being the only two human employees. When she noticed the shadowy man, Maisie let out a squeak, catching the attention of her drinking companions.

Roxy snorted, amused. "What, are you freaked out by him?" she asked with a laugh. "That's just Charlie—he owns the place, doesn't say much to the customers, not that there's any real need to. The hat is just to make him appear more mysterious so drunken idiots won't try anything, but he's just a big alcohol nerd. Oh, and an Exploding Snap nerd, really, but totally harmless."

"Yeah," agreed Desmond. "And Felix, the bouncer?" He pointed to the large man they'd passed on their way in. "As long as you don't get too rowdy, he won't bother you at all. And you don't strike me as the rowdy time, Finch-Fletchley."

Still frowning, Maisie followed them over to the bar but stood back with Roxy and Aniya while Desmond ordered them all a round of drinks. The silent Jan hung just behind her shoulder, glancing around every few seconds as though he was expecting someone to jump out and attack them for no discernible reason. Once Desmond had collected their drinks, the five headed through the crowd to find an empty table near the back of the pub where there weren't quite so many people.

"So do you go here often, then?" Maisie asked when they had finally settled down at an empty booth and cleared off the bottles of its previous occupants. She took a sip of her drink—plain Butterbeer—and focused her attention on Roxy, who shrugged in response.

"Not as much now, but definitely a lot when I was underage. My best friend from Hogwarts and I would come here all the time during the summer, pinch a few drinks, and then head out to a nice party. Have you ever heard of Mia or Mohammed Itterman?"  
Maisie furrowed her brow in thought. "He was a year ahead of me, I remember that—sort of quiet bloke who always acted like he had no clue what was going on no matter how many times you tried to explain things to him. I thought he was nice, even if everyone treated him like he was dense. But I've never heard of Mia—is she a cousin or…?"  
"Older sister," explained Roxy. "Much older, sure, although you'd never know she's pushing thirty from the way she acts sometimes. Anyway, the Ittermans have been holding parties for years, bringing all sorts of interesting people together to drink and smoke and listen to shitty music as a group while we all bitch about whatever problems are going on at the moment—you know, the usual shite about school, parents, jobs, relationships, and whatnot. Some people might think, even now, that the whole community we have going won't ever allow us to be worth fucking anything in our lives but it was always nice to have someone to whinge to whenever I had something going on in my life and I wouldn't trade those people for anything in the world."

The younger girl took a sip of her drink and nodded contemplatively. "Well, no matter what you were doing, it at least sounds like you had a nice time and met some good friends and that's the most important part in my opinion."

She struck Roxy as one of those hopelessly optimistic saps who believed that every book ended with a happily ever after and that no matter the struggle, life was all one long lesson to teach people how to be kinder and nicer to one another. She was, in comparison to Roxy, a mere child who had yet to realise how dark and awful the world could truly be—the horrors that could be experienced at such a young age.

But there was also some truth to her words, that hanging out with Mia and all of those other party-goers had always made her feel better at the end of the night.

Roxy hadn't spoken to most of those people in nearly ten months.

And things were different now— _Roxy_ was different now having experienced some truly awful shite in the last fifteen months. She couldn't properly enjoy those parties or relate to those people any more, not when their biggest problems were still making sure that they weren't too hungover for work the next day. She could pretend—or try to pretend—that she was normal and sane, but there was no way she could get uproariously drunk with a group of people who had become, for all intents and purposes, strangers to her.

Roxy could feel herself slowly becoming unable to handle everything that she'd gone through. More and more, as everything kept building up, she could not find a way to keep up the happy face and the cheery voice all of the time.

Noticing that Aniya was watching her closely now, Roxy did her best to shake off the dark thoughts and focus on the conversation. She couldn't smile, but she was still stable enough to remain in the present, with her co-workers.

Jan, who had stayed mute up to this point, was now telling a rather long-winded story about the time that he and Maisie had decided to spend the first snow day of seventh year Transfiguring textbooks into sledges and ride them down one of the many lengthy hills of Hogwarts. Maisie laughed wildly and picked up with her memories of that day, adding how she had convinced several friends to join them in the fun, including Lorcan.

Roxy could tell from the way that Jan watched Maisie that he was madly in love with the girl. He smiled any time that she brushed up against him, blushed when she would turn to look at him or ask for his response to one of his statements, and would frown any time that she brought up mention of Lorcan Scamander in one of her stories. He had probably been in love with her for quite some time; Jan reminded Roxy of Kieran over the past few months, especially right after they broke up. It wasn't clear whether or not Maisie knew about his feelings for her, but considering how friendly and physical she was being towards him, it was unlikely tha the blonde had yet to catch on.

"So," said Maisie, beaming. "I know you said you used to go out all the time, Roxy, but what about you Desmond, Aniya? Is the sort of thing that you two do regularly—go out for drinks and chat about the old days? I think it'd be fun to tag along ever now and then. I—I'm not a big drinker but I certainly do enjoy the conversation and the good company that often comes along with these situations, or at least that I'm told comes along."

She didn't receive a response for several long seconds as Aniya avoided eye contact, Desmond choked on his drink, and Roxy focused intently on the swirling pattern of the table.

How could they explain to Maisie that the last several months had not exactly opened themselves to having a few drinks and a laugh with their mates? When planning a war, there wasn't often much down time allowed in which could simply relax and goof around. In truth, Roxy and the other two felt like they had been bouncing from one bad situation to the next with no end in sight. They struggled because they had forgotten that there was anything else left for them to do.

So, no, they didn't regularly go out for drinks and a chat. But how would Maisie possibly understand any of that?

"You three were involved in the battle a few days ago in the centre of Diagon Alley, weren't you? I remember seeing the name 'Roxanne Weasley' plastered in a few of the papers the next day and wondering if this Weasley was the same one who works only two desks down from me." Jan propped his head up on his elbow, watching them carefully.

"Um, yeah," replied Aniya. "That was us. We were trying to stop, uh, a terrorist threat—" the official excuse given by the Ministry, "—and obviously, we did our jobs correctly since everything is back to normal now."

"Mm." He took a sip of his drink. "You know, my dad fought at the Battle of Hogwarts. He was pretty lucky to have survived, being only sixteen at the time. My mum was twelve and escorted out of the school with the rest of the Slytherins. My dad ended up losing three of his friends, his half-sister, and his then-girlfriend all in one night. My grandfather on my mum's side—Albert Runcorn, from whom I get my middle name—was thrown into Azkaban for the rest of his life. In fact, he's still there today."

Roxy narrowed her eyes at him, unsure where the boy was going with his story. They all knew adults—parents, aunts and uncles, older siblings—who had lost someone during the reign of Voldemort. Jan's story was anything but new.

He continued, "I'm the oldest of four, with a fifteen year old brother named Richard—the _favoured_ son—a sister named Callisto, and the youngest, Rupert, who's twelve. Callisto..." He trailed off, frowning before his eyes focused on Aniya and he spoke once more. "Callie was going to turn fourteen this December. I remember her, a sweet little kid who was always singing to herself, made up words, made up melodies. She was atop a broom by the time she could walk and charmed anyone who spoke to her. And then one day—she must have been three and I, eight—Callie just...disappeared. We weren't supposed to talk about her or tell anyone we had a sister. Ricky was only four and Rupert was little more than an infant so they barely remembered her before too long, but I never forgot. Even now, I can't just forget my baby sister. _Especially_ now, having finally found out what happened to her. See, my dad got this letter back in August that made him freeze and nothing we said got his attention. After, when he and my mother were in his study, arguing as they always do these days, I hid in the hallway to listen. They were speaking about Callie, my lost sister. Mum was crying while Dad ranted about 'that blasted Potter'. I didn't understand what Mr Potter had to do with my sister's disappearance—wasn't he supposed to be a war hero? It wasn't until several days later when _The Prophet_ released a story about Mr Potter and Project Starkid that I connected the dots. I slipped back into my father's office that night and stole the letter to read it myself. It was then that I learned that my father and godfather, though he was still in Azkaban, had worked together to sell my sister to the people running Project Starkid all those years ago and that's where she'd been this whole time."

"What happened to her?" Aniya asked softly, though it was easy to tell from the pain on his face that the end of this story was not that of a happy and touching reunion between siblings.

"My grandfather wrote from Azkaban to inform my father that, thanks to the rain conducted by Harry Potter at the end of July, my sister, along with many others who attempted to escape Project Starkid, was killed by her captors and her corpse was left abandoned underneath the Ministry. The sister that was stolen from me almost eleven years ago was now gone forever."

In her seat, Roxy shifted uncomfortably, wondering which of the many corpses they had to leave behind was that of Jan's younger sister. How many people and families had they failed to save in their attempts to stop Trinh Itawa and her crazed desires?

But wasn't it better that anything had been done at all to save those people rather than allow all of them to continue suffering along with any new victims that could have been brought in over the next few years?

While the others patted Jan on the back and gave their most sincere condolences, Roxy crossed her arms and watched the younger male closely. Though he was frowning and his voice had quivered several times during his story, Roxy could tell that he wasn't just telling this story to show how upset he was. No, there was something else there, some other layer hidden just beneath the surface. Unfortunately for him, it had always been a common practise for Slytherins to tell each other lies and see who could unravel them the fastest, which made Roxy rather talented at interpreting the motives of others.

"Why are you telling us this?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at Jan so that the other Slytherin knew what Roxy was truly asking— _what's the real message here?_ "I'm sorry for your dead sister but why tell the story of a girl you barely knew to a group of people who, with the exception of Maisie, you barely know now?"

He tilted his head and focused on her, eyes burning intently; the reason behind his story became apparent even as he opened his mouth to speak—anger, and a need for revenge.

"Trinh Itawa, the terrorist you helped to stop last week? Her trial has to be called soon, considering that she's being held in Aurors' custody. They can't keep her locked away forever. And I'm sure there will be plenty of people to testify against her, but I am begging you, Roxy, to help ensure that I am one of those people, for the sake of my sister. I won't let her murderer walk away free and besides that, I know this is the right thing to do. It's what Itawa deserves, to be forced to face the families that she tore apart and the lives that she destroyed because of her crazed beliefs."

"They aren't going to connect the two situations, though. As far as the Wizengamot is concerned, Starkid had nothing to do with Trinh, so they won't be putting her on trial for all of those people that died that day, including your sister, as much as you may want to tie the two together—and as much as the two truly _are_ tied. But because that isn't how it will be seen in the court case, your testimony would be thrown out for its 'irrelevancy' to the case at hand."

Jan scowled, tightening his grip on his glass of Butterbeer. He grumbled, "Well, that's a load of shite, then, not letting me bring justice to my sister. Are you honestly telling me that I'm just stuck here, unable to do or say anything to have a part in ensuring that Itawa is thrown into Azkaban for the rest of her life like she deserves?"

"I'm sorry, she told him, not sure what else to say. "I feel the same way about Itawa and I wish there was some way of ensuring that she has to face every single one of her victims but the Wizengamot simply won't allow it—they'll say it has nothing to do with the trial and that there simply isn't enough time to go through all the victims. She deserves this punishment and she deserves even more than life imprisonment, but sometimes people get off with less than what they deserve no matter what everyone else may think about the situation."

But he shook his head violently, hand sweeping the Butterbeer glass and sending to the floor, where it broke immediately, causing a house elf to appear to clean up the mess. "I don't care what you say!" Jan insisted, slamming his fist onto the table and sending Maisie and Desmond's glasses toppling as well. "I'm not going to just sit back and letters speak out while I say nothing. That's not what Callisto would have wanted!"  
"Well, you don't _really_ know what she would have wanted, do you? You barely knew her to begin with and now she's dead, so you can't exactly ask her."

The others gaped at her; Maisie gasped and cried, "Roxy, you can't say things like that!", but she merely shrugged and stared at Jan, daring him to have another major outburst. They found themselves caught in a staring contest, forcing the two Slytherins to glare sharply at each other, non-verbally daring the other to back down first.

"Can you at least try and see what they say?" Jan finally asked, a whining tone colouring his words, making him sound even younger than his eighteen years. "I can't just sit back and watch. Surely you, as a fellow Slytherin, understand the desire for revenge?"

She narrowed her eyes at Jan, pondering the worth of helping out a mere stranger. Beyond work and their mutual hatred of Trinh Itawa, what connection did she have with this boy? A Hogwarts house and nothing more. Why should she put forth the effort to help him when Roxy felt like she could barely help herself any more?

But as she thought about it, Roxy saw more and more how beneficial it would be—he'd be another testimony, another raised voice, clenched fist, flooded eye, and flushed face. Even if the Wizengamot allowed his testimony into this case, it would possibly bring into question the legitimacy of Phuong Itawa's claims that Project Starkid had nothing to do with the actions of her daughter at Diagon Alley.

"Fine," she told him and Jan perked up immediately. "I'll talk to my uncle about having you added to the list of witnesses but understand that it won't be my fault if he says no and it _definitely_ won't be my fault if what you say is deemed inadmissible during the trial. I'll vouch for you on this one thing and then you're on your own. I don't typically do favours, especially for people who aren't my friends, so consider yourself lucky."

He eagerly thanked her several times but Roxy only rolled her eyes and told him to shut up and order them another round of drinks before she changed her mind. She smirked to watch Jan run off to the bar as quickly as he could.

There was a moment of awkward silence following his departure wherein Maisie cleared her throat, Aniya took a sip of remained of her drink, and Desmond cocked his head while he stared at Roxy, doing his level best to follow the logic of what she was hoping to get out of talking to Harry about Jan. if he understood anything about Roxy, it was that not _everything_ she did was for personal desire, even if she claimed otherwise.

"What?" asked Roxy, raising her eyebrows at him.

"Just wondering…" Desmond replied slowly, still watching her. "You know, I mostly stuck with the other Ravenclaws my entire time at Hogwarts yet I don't think I've spoken to a single one of them since graduation, including my best mate, Arnie. I started a job with my dad's company and Arnie went off to fulfil his big dream of becoming an Auror. Last I heard, he's getting married next spring, but we haven't written to each other in almost four years and I haven't been invited to the wedding or heard anything about it from him. He honestly was my best mate four years ago."

"Well you've found new friends, haven't you? _Good_ friends, too, I would certainly say." Aniya patted his arm and gave her boyfriend a cheeky smile. "But what does that have to do with anything, Desmond?"

"Only that I wonder where our lives will be in four more year's time. Perhaps I will still be working for Henrik's, perhaps I'll be married, perhaps I'll be sitting in a totally different bar with totally different people." He smiled when Aniya smacked his arm but then went right back to being serious. "Maybe in four years I'll be dead or have some sort of disease or I'll be homeless. I certainly hope not—I'd like to just be living a normal life with a good job and even better friends but who the hell knows, right? I thought Arnie and I would be best mates at each other's weddings and that we'd be godfathers to each other's children. Instead, he didn't even invite me to the wedding and I don't know that he ever thinks about me."

Maisie reached across the table to pat him on the arm, nodding consolingly. "You know, being an adult is so different from being at Hogwarts. You tell yourself you'll stay in touch and that you won't lose the friends that you made but besides Jan and Lorcan, I haven't really spoken to any of my friends either. I know it's only been a few months but I already feel so different from how I was at school. Does that make any sense?"

Roxy thought of her old friends—Cheyenne, Aleah, Lyric, and Gwenyth. She hadn't talked to them in ages. Hell, she'd talked to _Tilly_ more than the other four girls combined, which both amazed and horrified Roxy. She had no clue what any of them were even doing or where they had run off to following graduation.

But that was how life after Hogwarts worked, wasn't it? Finding those few close friends, making new ones and forgetting the past?

People like here Uncles Harry and Ron and Aunt Hermione were rare. Their circle of friends was mostly intact even after thirty years, though maybe that was because their friendships had been born out of hardship, war, and suffering. Perhaps if there had been no Death Eaters and no Pureblood War, they would have drifted apart just as normal friends do.

"I dunno, I still write to Ellie and Evey every now and then," said Aniya, then shrugged when Roxy threw her a confused glance. "You know, Ellie Thomas and Evelyn Creevey? I don't see either of them in person too often any more but I know Evey's planning her wedding to Soren Coote and she's always writing to ask what I think she ought to wear or what are proper colours or when the wedding should be and I have to remind her that she's only just nineteen so what's the rush in getting married right this very second? And Ellie's in Spain right now, having a lovely time representing her mum's company, so I also get to hear about that. As long as you put forth the effort, though, you don't _have_ to lose all of your Hogwarts' friends the moment you graduate."

Roxy pondered to herself whether she was willing to owl Gwen or Cheyenne and try to connect with them once more. She frowned, then decided it might be worth it if only to remember a time when things were better and her only worries were test scores.

But what could she even talk about? What was there to even say any more to them? Hadn't they become just as much strangers to her as Jan or Maisie were now?

Jan returned a few minutes later with their drinks, looking flushed as he dropped back into his seat. The five continued to chat for the better part of an hour until Maisie begged off, excusing herself as a lightweight. Jan leapt to his feet once more and offered to help her home but Maisie only laughed and waved him off, causing the boy to let his gaze fall sullenly to the floor.

Maisie waved good-bye and Apparated away to Lorcan's flat; a few minutes later, Jan also claimed that he had "to be somewhere else" and departed. Desmond, much more cheerful now, walked the remaining two girls back to their flat, where he kissed Aniya good-night and told Roxy to behave herself, winking. Then, making a face at them, he, too, Apparated home.

"What do you think of them?" Aniya asked then, when Roxy looked at her questioningly, elaborated, "Maisie and Jan, I mean. She's nice enough and he's obviously madly in love with her. And his obsession with Itawa almost rivals your own, wouldn't you say?"

"I suppose so. I don't know what he really hopes to accomplish but if he finds what he wants out of this trial, then more power to him. As for Maisie, I can't help feel like there's more to her than she'll allow to be shown. Nobody is naturally that bubbly and perky all the time, I simply don't buy it. There's bound to be something deeper behind that bright smile if only she'd allow us to dig that far down. Perhaps I ought to ask Lorcan if he knows anything unusual about his girlfriend."

"You know, I used to think Scamander was gay—both of 'em, actually, but certainly Lorcan, considering he was always fretting over his appearance and the way he'd shriek like a girl whenever someone would throw even so much as a quill at him. No wonder they never let him play Quidditch, he would have destroyed Ravenclaw from the inside at every single match."

"Nah, Lorcan's as straight as they come. He's just a pansy is all. I couldn't tell you what Lys is, though, and I've known the bloke his whole life. I don't think _he_ could really tell you, either, though, in his defence."

Aniya chuckled and slipped into the bathroom to scrub away her make-up before bed, leaving Roxy to stand quietly by herself in the sitting room. Today had been a long day and though she was exhausted by it all, Roxy could not will herself to move towards her bedroom door to try to get some sleep despite it being nearly midnight by this point and she had work early the next morning. Instead, she just stood there and continued her contemplations from earlier about owling any of the other Slytherin girls, wondering if she wouldn't just be better off pretending like she was wholly ready to move on from that stage in her life.

"I don't see an issue with contacting them," said a male voice behind her. "After all, they were some of your closest friends not that long ago, why couldn't they become that once more? Or are you afraid of what will happen if the new Roxy and the old Roxy try to co-exist? I assure you, the likelihood of death by socialisation is very slim."

She put her hands on her hips, glaring mockingly at the silvery form of James Potter, who was leaning against the front door, a smile playing at the edges of his lips. "Well, haven't _you_ been gone awhile," Roxy said, then smiled gently at the ghost of her great-uncle or whatever the hell James Potter was. "We could have used your help in Diagon Alley, you slacker. Or were you 'too busy' again?"

She had to joke around and keep everything light-hearted so that no one would know how close she was to reaching the edge of her sanity. Not even the ghost of James Potter could be allowed to know just how off-kilter Roxy felt all the time now. After all, nobody around her seemed to have been that negatively affected, so she would need to pretend that the same was true of herself or risk being seen as 'unwell'.

James Potter shrugged non-committally. "Ghosts can be busy, too, Weasley. No need to get all freaked out, you handled the situation well enough without me anyway. Not _that_ many casualties in the grand scheme of things and you managed to capture the enemy in the process. That's better than how a number of my Auror missions ended back in the day."

"You call fifty deaths 'not that many'? And we only got Trinh—McClane and Phuong are still free at the moment. I'm not ready to exactly be calling this a rousing success just yet." Dammit, why couldn't she keep up the falsely happy pretences for longer than a few minutes?

"Well, however you see it, having me around wasn't going to help much. It's not like I can hold a wand or anything. I'm better for standing in the backgrounded and giving helpful advice these days rather than jumping into the fray with no way of doing anything."

"Why _are_ you here anyway?" she asked him, then, attempting another joke, added, "Come to haunt me for all of eternity?"

"Actually, I have a message—from your brother."


	65. Chloe (searches) for some answers

_**Warning: mild transphobia contained within this chapter.**_

* * *

Chloe tried to pretend like she couldn't hear Dean calling out her name as he ran after her, yelling for Chloe to come back and apologise for laughing at him when he mentioned the story of how he'd been bitten by a Venomous Tentacula in Herbology. She knew Dean had only shared that story in the first place because he too found it amusing, so his exaggerated reaction when she burst into laughed was all just part of their game.

Besides, if he were really mad, Dean would have stopped giving chase and stomped off to talk to Benji or Nordic or even Tobias instead of her. The fact that he was still chasing after he meant that he wasn't really angry, even if he kept yelling after her about how much he was. If he were truly frustrated, he would refuse to have anything to do with her.

She turned around briefly to waggle her fingers at him before speeding up to see if she could catch up with some of the other girls from Gryffindor, wondering if they would be more friendly today than they usually were.

Reaching out, she caught the corner of Hayden's sleeve as she slowed to a halt, making the other girl freeze and spin around to look at her. The remaining three girls also stopped and stared at her, wearing identical expressions that she couldn't quite read. They were four of her eight dorm-mates, a quartet that made up the most popular girls in the year, as Chloe had quickly discovered on the first day of the school year.

Their leader, Kendall Tugwood, had told Chloe under no uncertain terms that _proper_ Gryffindors didn't associate with Slytherins and if she didn't leave Dean Longbottom alone, Kendall would ensure that nobody ever talked to Chloe until the day she graduated.

But she was optimistic that the affections of her dorm-mates could be won over if she only tried hard enough—Chloe could become friends with the Gryffindor girls _and_ Dean, no matter what anyone else tried to say. So she kept trying at every available opportunity to get them to like her, even if Dean kept saying that life would be better off if she just gave up and accepted that the other girls were immature arseholes that weren't worth her time.

"Hi, Hayden," she said in a cheery voice, smiling at the other girls. "Hello Hyacinth, Kendall, Kara. It's a lovely day today, isn't it? Didn't you enjoy Professor Greengrass' Charms lesson this morning? I found it to be quite helpful really, especially since I've been doing by absolute best to catch up with everyone else. And I like Professor Greengrass, too, such a nice lady. She's been giving me extra assignments as help, which I appreciate."

Chloe knew she was rambling but she couldn't keep herself from going on and on about something that she knew the others didn't give a damn about. She just wanted them to like her.

Kara, who was probably the prettiest and nicest of the four frowned at Chloe and shook her head, indicating that it would be best to probably stop speaking then before Kendall found too much ammo to use against Chloe in the future. It would not be the first time since September that she might be brought to tears because what had been thrown back in her face—clumsy attempts at friendship that had turned into nonsensical, unending stories that revealed how much of a child she still was compared to all of the rest of her year. But how was she to know how to talk to normal people when she'd spent her whole life locked away from the real world?

"Oh, look, it's Longbottom's little girlfriend, here to make another pathetic attempt to seem cool." Hyacinth smirked and crossed her arms, laughing when a flash of pain crossed Chloe's face. "What, are you going to cry again to try to get us to pity you? You _do_ know that nobody likes you, right Weasley, not when you hang out with scummy Slytherins like _him_?" She nodded her head in the direction of Dean, who had come up behind Chloe and froze.

Though Hyacinth, Kendall, and Hayden all laughed, Kara was only able to manage a weak smile, looking uncomfortable. She glanced away but said nothing in protest.

"You know, I hear that Weasley and all of those other kids from her freaky programme are all just a bunch of secluded lunatics who got looked away by the Ministry because they aren't fit for human society— _proper_ human society, like us." Kendall chuckled. "That's why they only ever talk amongst themselves and the other little freaks of Hogwarts. It's why they don't know how to socialise like actually people, because they _aren't_ actual people, just like Longbottom here. Freaks the whole of them."

Dean scowled at her. "We've gone over this before, Tugwood, I'm not a freak and neither is Chloe. I'm not above dragging Professor Shrever into this whole mess again if you don't stop making comments like this. Shrever isn't going to tolerate any more of your bullcrap, you heard her last time. And I don't think your poor nails can handle any manual labour."

"Well maybe if you weren't so messed up and such a little baby that you run to the professors any time that someone tells you the truth, perhaps you and I wouldn't keep running into this problem, _Alice_." Kendall smirked to see the anger on Dean's face.

"My name is Dean and you'd do well to respect that, Kendall," he replied through gritted teeth. His hands were clenched into fists and he shook form the effort of holding back no matter how badly he wanted to hit her.

"Whatever you say, Alice."

Several things happened then; Dean shoved Chloe out of the way to lunge at Kendall, a scream tearing at his throat. At the same time, Kara pulled away from her friends and slapped Kendall while Hyacinth and Hayden looked between them in horror. Chloe fell to the hard stone floor and gasped in shock, placing her hand to her mouth to reveal that it was bleeding. Kendall, the side of her face bright red, could only look on in shock as she was tackled by a shrieking Dean, the two of them collapsing to the floor.

A few metres away, Chloe continued to stare down at the blood on her fingers, her lower lip trembling as Dean only briefly turned around to glance at her before re-focusing his attention on pummelling the shite out of Kendall. He didn't even care that she was hurt.

Tears sprung to her eyes as she pushed herself up from the floor and ran off, not looking back to where the others were now huddled around Kendall. Nobody cared about Chloe. No one ever would—she knew that already, but that didn't mean it didn't still hurt to realise that even Dean didn't care about her at the moment.

She continued running down the length of the hallway and then turned to the left and kept springing, wanting to put it all behind her, hoping that if she ran far and fast enough, all of the pain would go away forever and leave her as a mere empty shell.

Chloe ran and ran and ran until she had nowhere else left to go, confronted only by an opening at the end of the hall that led to a view overlooking the grounds, where strange, bony horses were wandering around the edge of the woods. There was a large wooden hut not too far from the skeletal horses but it seemed empty and devoid of life.

She walked to the edge and put her hands on the stone wall, feeling the mid-October breeze in her face. Today was the twelfth, her sixteenth birthday, a fact that Chloe only knew because it was on her paperwork when Ange adopted her. Today was the day that, thirteen years ago, she had been sold off like she were nothing more than an unwanted package. A few of the older children from Starkid had loved to mock about it, that she'd been tossed away by unloving parents—and to know that it had happened on her birthday was even worse.

Barely stifling a sob, Chloe lowered her head onto the stone and sighed, wondering why it was that nobody liked her. What had she ever done to offend anyone that they only ever saw her as a target for abuse?

"Chloe? Chloe, is that you? Sweetheart, is that you, darling?"

There was a woman standing just inside the school with the same wavy blonde hair as Chloe and the same blue-grey eyes. She had a few freckles across her face and had a narrow nose that turned up at the end, just like Chloe's did. It was obvious who the woman was, even if Chloe had no memories of her. This was her mother, thirteen years later, a beautiful person even if she was showing signs of early middle-age. This was Chloe's mum, still well kept though pushing forty years old at this point.

"Oh, Chloe, it _is_ you," said her mother, approaching with her arms outstretched, tears in her eyes as she moved to embrace her long-lost daughter. "My darling little girl, you've grown up so much. I've missed you, you know, we've all missed you. My baby girl, I'm so happy to see you again, it's been ever so long since we saw each other."

Chloe wasn't sure how to respond to this person that she barely even knew, a woman who had given her away before Chloe was even old enough to form proper memories. She only knew who this person was by the undeniable fact of how similar they looked. But she felt no connection, no feeling or rush of affection for the person who had given birth to her.

"Why are you here? This is a school—it's a school day. Shouldn't you be at your house or your job or whatever it is that you do with your time since it certainly isn't being my mum? Don't you have better things to do than wander around Hogwarts?"

"Oh my little angel." Her mother moved closer but Chloe stepped out of the way and frowned at her. "Darling, I'm here for _you,_ to get you back so that our family can be whole again. I've come to ask that woman—Shrever—if she'd let me see you and now here you are in the flesh, my wonderful baby, my little girl. Oh, I've missed you terribly, I'm ever so glad to see you again. Please, don't you think it's time we were a family once more, a real family? You could come home for Christmas and we could all be together again."

It was hard to suppress the urge to gag at her mother's overly sweet sentiments. "I have a family already, a mother and a sister and plenty of cousins who don't seem to mind the sudden new relative. If anything, I'm just one new Weasley, one new seat at the dinner table. You aren't exactly my mother any more. After all, you've given me away twice now."

"No, no, darling, I haven't given you away at all. It was a mistake on my part, I reacted without thinking is all. I still love you, sweetheart. I'm sure if you were to testify about it, I could gain custody of you once more, I could become your mother again, as I was meant to be."

Chloe crossed her arms over her chest and glared at the older woman. "You gave me away, _Mrs Coxley_." She threw the name at her, watching with some level of amusement to see her former mother wince. "When I was three years old, today of all day! It's my birthday today, did you know? It's my birthday, although I'm sure you long ago forgot the day that I was born. But you gave me away, sold me to Phuong Itawa and Rafael McClane. How much money did you get from me, huh, Mrs Coxley? Ten galleons? Fifty? One hundred? How much was my childhood worth to you? They _tortured_ me, did you know that? Thirteen years of torture and abuse and being told at every possible moment that I'm useless garbage unfit to live. Even here, I get abuse from other students. They think I'm a freak! Oh, I can put on a happy face and pretend like I don't understand their insults but in the end, I'm still left crying and friendless and alone! I could have had a normal life, if you'd just kept me, loved me like a mother should love her children. Instead, because of you, I have a _new_ family who actually gives half a shite about me for the first time in my life. So let me ask you again, why are you here, Mrs Coxley? It certainly isn't for me."

Her mother looked at Chloe in horror, shaking her head as she stumbled over an empty protest that meant nothing. How could she deny what was so obviously true—how could she pretend like she cared about Chloe at all?

She stammered, closing her eyes as she struggled to formulate a response. "I came here to see the headmistress about your brother, Alexander. He's been struggling as of late, you know, with classes. That dreadful excuse for a Head of House has kicked my darling boy off of the Quidditch team and I will simply not let that stand. He is the best Keeper that Ravenclaw has ever had, so kicking him off of the team is simply outrageous and I refuse to accept it."

"Ah." Chloe couldn't refrain from letting out a small, high-pitched burst of laughter. "So you're here on behalf of your _real_ children and then, by pure coincidence, you've run into me, so you decide that the logical decision was to _lie_ about it?"

"Honey, I'm not lying, I do want you to come back to us—"

Chloe screamed at her, making her mother jump back in fright. "You don't give a damn about me! You never did, that's why you gave me away in the first place. Tell me, tell me, why did you sell me off? What did they tell yo that got you to toss me away so easily? Or have you always desired to remove me from your life so you could carry on with your happy little family, not having to worry about your freak of a daughter?"

Her mother was close to tears as she continued to shake her head insistently, continuing her charade of pretending like she was somehow the victim of this whole situation.

"My baby girl, no, no, no, that's not the truth, I didn't sell you or give you away, I couldn't, not my precious child, the love of my life. I—they took you away from me, that's all, just like all of those other children over the years. You were stolen away from me. Your father never recovered, the poor man, and he died in his search for you. I grieved, of course, but I am a woman not sued to work and I still had my two little boys to care for. So I remarried, when it was appropriate to do so, and moved on with my life. But I never stopped thinking about you, my first angel, always hoping you'd come back to me some day."

"You're lying again, Mother. You _sold_ me, I know you did, so there's no point in pretending otherwise when we both know that isn't true. So why don't you just tell me the truth, why you really let them have me?"

Her mother sighed and then, finally, nodded, a small nod that would have gone unnoticed if Chloe had not been watching the woman with a burning gaze. "Very well. It's true, it's true, I sold you, I gave you away, I signed away your life as easily as buying ingredients to make a potion. But...but I had my reasons, you must understand. I married your father at twenty-one and had you by twenty-three. Not even two years later came your brother, Alexander. I wasn't ready, you see? How could I, with all of these sudden responsibilities shoved onto me? And you—you...well, they say children don't start showing signs of magic until they reach early childhood, but you were able to do a number of things from a very early age, only a few months old. You would become mad for any conceivable reason and a teddy bear would become nothing more than a pile of ash, completely unrecognisable. And then once you could talk, you never seemed to stop, asking for this or that—oh, get me a toy, get me a treat, I don't want to take a bath. And I found myself compelled to comply, as though your very words were pulling me to do whatever I was commanded to by a girl who wouldn't even wipe her own arse. So I sold you to Itawa, unable to cope with the little monster I had birthed and then lied to everyone, saying you'd been stolen from the garden like so many of those other little souls. But I regret it, now that I'm older and wiser. I want to make things right again, surely you can understand that? Everything would be as it was _meant_ to be."

Chloe glared at her. "Why would I ever want to go back to a life with the human who ruined it in the first place, are you mad? I...I spent all those years asking myself why would a loving mother give away her child and now I finally have the answer. You don't love me—you never did and you certainly don't give a damn about me now. If you hadn't come down this hallway today, we would have never met. And why? Because I'm just a dark blot on your past, a troubled moment that you so easily walked away from."

She looked at her mother for a moment longer, then huffed and pushed past the middle-aged woman, throwing a scowl in her direction and continued stomping down the hallway, not bothering to look behind her at the apparently heartbroken expression on her mother's face.

"It isn't Coxley any more, you know!" she called out to her daughter's retreating back. "My name is Torrance now. And I have new children—a new daughter who isn't a worthless freak like you! I love her more than I could ever love you!"

In response, Chloe flipped her off and kept going. She had to move quickly, speeding from hallway to hallway, running up staircases and sprinting past snoring portraits, hoping that if she moved fast enough it would keep the tears from streaming from her face. It hurt, the admission, the revelation of truth. After all these years, she had found out the truth about her mother and now that it had been revealed, Chloe felt only emptiness.

Even after all this time, she was unloved and unwanted, a forgotten piece of the past, an abandoned child that no one cared about nor had any reason to care about her. She was all alone in this terrible world, with no one else to help.

No, no, that wasn't true, that wasn't how the story was going to end now. She had Roxy and she had Ange along with all the other Weasleys. They were her family now, the ones who loved her and wanted the best for her. And as soon as Dean stopped being angry about what happened with Kendall, he would find Chloe and apologise and she would have a friend again in this massive school. She may not have anyone else, but she had the Weasleys and she had Dean no matter what else happened. Why would she need that useless woman that dared to call herself a mother? Why would she ever want anything to do with her ever again?

Chloe slowed down and then stopped running altogether, finding herself in a dark hallway several floors up in an area of the school that she didn't recognise. It smelt wrong, like burnt wax and something alcoholic. Chloe had no idea where she had ended up.

Looking up, she spotted a patch of the ceiling that was different from the rest, a thin square outlined above her head. Chloe frowned, wondering what it could possibly be for. Then she remembered the wand in her pocket and, fishing it out, she waved it at the ceiling, cause the darker patch to let out a loud cracking noise and popped out of its spot.

There was a ladder made of wood, the railing painted silver, with little vine carvings all along the side. The ladder only let out that much stronger of a scent that was definitely some kind of nauseating alcohol. She craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what was inside but saw only darkness and the glow of something in the distance.

A voice seemed to call out to her, beckoning Chloe to climb the ladder and go into the room upstairs to discover all of its secrets, to uncover what that gleaming light was and find whatever stranger strange things there were hidden away in that little room.

Figuring that a little exploring couldn't hurt, she grabbed onto the lowest rung of the ladder and pulled herself upwards to the top. She clambered up the whole way, jumping up the last few rungs, a gasp of breath and excitement rushing through her, leaving her chest heaving and her head to spun, making Chloe dizzy and forcing her to clutch at the top part of the railing, worried that she would pass out all by herself up here.

"You aren't alone, dear child. No one in thin this world is truly alone no matter how much they may want to be. There is simply no escaping the whole of the human race."

The speaker was an old woman with greying hair that had once been dirty blonde in colour. She had large pale blue eyes hidden behind an even larger pair of turtle shell glasses that made her look bug-eyed. Swore several long shawls over her robe, all of which appeared to be handmade. And when she leered in Chloe's direction, it was clear where the smell of alcohol was coming from, as the old woman positively reeked of it.

"You are the newest Weasley from that batch of children who appeared from the underground." She jabbed her finger at Chloe, asking not a question but merely clarifying a truth they both already knew. "The power of the silver tongue, making those around you fall to your will at the simplest of requests. That has been your gift, Chloe Coxley."

"Oh?" Chloe raised her eyebrows disbelievingly. "If I have such an incredible gift, how come I can't get anyone to like me, huh? No amount of talking seems to convince my dorm-mates that I'm anything other than a freak. Hell, I just spoke to my own mother, which is a _very_ long story that I don't feel like going into, but suffice it to say that even she had long ago abandoned me. If I can make people do what I want, why do they all seem to hate me?"

The old woman gave her a mysterious smirk then beckoned the sixteen year old to come further inside. "I'll put on some tea if you'll have a seat and we can have a nice chat."

Chloe followed after her, glancing around at all of the tabled covered in old cloths, each with a pretty little hand-carved wooden bowl which contained a candle. There was a bookshelf of crystal balls, another of several different types of teacups, and a third bookshelf that was entirely full of battered copies of _Unfogging the Future._

"You're the Divination professor, aren't you?"

"Sybill Trelawney, yes. I've been a professor for, oh, so many years, guiding young minds to see their Inner Eye. I have been told many a time that Divination is not a true magical subject and that I have no place to be teaching children a bundle of lies and false hopes. But I prevail year after year, up here in my chambers, and those who are willing to learn discover the true powers of the Inner Eye. I have seen three Headmasters in my time here. Hogwarts is my home—they shall not cast me out until it is my time."

There was a sad expression on the professor's face as she pointed her wand at a tea kettle, causing it to float over and settle onto a table and began bubbling with water she made appear inside. Then, with that same sad look, she turned to face Chloe once more.

"It is those like us, the so called 'freaks', that suffer the most in this world and we are given the same excuse every time, that it is our place to suffer as recompense for the supposed sins that we have committed. And what sins are these that they speak of? The Inner Eye, the silver tongue, the ability to freeze all motion to remove yourself from harm! What sins are these? What sort of inhuman crimes have we committed that we have earned our shame form those who are not like us?" She shook her head and began fussing around with teacups, shoving them around on their shelf and mumbling to herself about which were the best to use for the situation at hand.

"But people like you and me and all of those others from Project Starkid—why can we do what we can do in the first place? I mean, what's the point in having these abnormal abilities if they don't seem to help anyone and are only ever met with scorn? I just don't think it makes any sense, the way that this world works."

Trelawney waved her hands non-committally. "Oh, that is how they see the world, isn't it, Miss Weasley, seeing what they want to see, choosing to assume that how they live is the right way to live regardless of the evidence that says elsewise. As to why we can do things that they cannot, I could not presume to tell you the first reason why only that some can and the rest merely look on in hateful jealousy. You may as well ask why it is that there are witches and wizards and why there are muggles. Who can say why, only that they exist and they are a blessing, no matter what anyone else may say to you."

The tea kettle let out a sharp whistle, making Trelawney jump; she clattered around, pulling the kettle off of the table and carefully doling the tea out into two undecorated cups, handing one to Chloe, who took it gratefully. She had become much accustomed to tea since her departure from Starkid.

"How long have you been the Divination professor here?"

"Forty-eight years now, Miss Weasley. I began my first term here in the fall of eighty-one and I've not left yet, not even when that dreadful woman tried to cast me out." She turned aside briefly, mumbling something about pink toads and kittens. "I have seen a number of students throughout the years—many who take the class for their own twisted interests, even more who sit back and criticise my work and claim I am a fraud. But those few who know the truth and believe—and the even few who have true talent? Oh, yes, _those_ are the students I love best and they are the reason I refuse to leave, no matter what anyone else says."

"So you can see the future? You're like someone from Project Starkid?" asked Chloe curiously, tilting her head. She remembered those who could do it, the way they would make their own entertainment out of telling people their futures. The others would never let them bet on the outcomes of childish games like racing or kickball.

Trelawney nodded absently. "I have the miraculous powers of the Inner Eye, though I have come to accept that over the years it often eludes me except when I need it most. But I would not give up the gift for anything, my dear. Did you know that it was _me_ that made the prophecy concerning Harry Potter and the Dark Lord?" At Chloe's incredulous look, she smiled, proud of herself. "Yes, my one true claim to fame, but ah, what a pleasure to shape the future."

"I've never seen you at dinner before. Do you regularly keep yourself locked away from everyone else or do they not let you out?" Chloe remembered the times that they would lock her away—McClane and his assistants—even while she kicked and screamed and begged to be let out because she'd be a good girl again if they only just gave her the chance.

Trelawney cocked her head, giving Chloe a curious glance. "I stay up here because I like it up here—my tower is no prison, it never has been. If anything my tower is more preferable to anything that could be offered to me down there amongst the students. No, no, up here in my solitude, I have a far more personal connection to my Inner Eye than I would be whilst surrounded by all that life, all of the chatter and mess that comes with too many people. If I am locked away at all, it is by the demands of society that attempts to convert me to their normalcy. Bah." She waved her hands and scoffed. "As if anyone can truly say what it means to be normal. Such claims are preposterous and I choose to ignore them all."

Childhood had been nothing but slaps to the face, insults hurled at her in an attempt to beak Chloe until she was one more of their loyal soldiers, ready and willing to die for a cause that would require her to step on the necks of those deemed to be beneath her.

So many times since she'd been broken free, rescued by Roxy, she had asked herself why it was that she found it so easy to turn tail on what she had been raised to believe. But now she knew the truth—that Roxy had been that glimmer of hope, the first after so many years of darkness and despair. She was a kind person, a loving older sister who was willing to offer an encouraging hand to a scared little girl who was desperate for someone to say that they cared for her life and for her continued existence in this world.

Roxy had said she loved her when everyone else called Chloe a freak; Roxy offered her a way out when the adults of her life locked her away in a small dark room where there was no happiness or laughter or promise of a future. Roxy was her rescue and the only reason that Chloe had not become just one more body lining the main room of her prison.

"Are you okay, Miss Weasley? Why, you've gone positively pale, my dear," said Professor Trelawney, giving her a sympathetic smile. "I suppose your transition from prisoner to student has not been an easy one. I can imagine the struggle that you must be going through internally not to mention externally."

Chloe shrugged. "There are eight other girls in my dorm by they don't talk to me or associate themselves with me and I know that they whisper behind my back when I leave the room. Some of the girls take it upon themselves to actively and verbally attack me, making it clear that they see me as an unwanted outside that they would rather see dead than continue sleeping in a bed near. Just because I'm friends with a Slytherin, I'm met by scorn amongst the other Slytherins. I was told my house was that of the brave but so far they only strike me as prejudiced, cowardly monsters. Some days, I truly do hate it here."

Trelawney took a long sip of her tea, watching Chloe carefully, observing her like she was a particularly fascinating portrait, but certainly not a real human girl. Nobody saw her as a human, nobody save for Roxy.

"You fear rejection?" Trelawney asked finally, blinking rapidly behind her large frames. "You fear what will happen if you reach out to them, that they will turn away room you and leave you behind? Is that what scares you?"

"No!" Chloe yelled, balling her fists. "Don't you get it? No, no, nobody gets it, nobody understands me. Even amongst the freaks, I'm a freak! The sad little girl who clings to others and begs for just a small scrap of friendship, even a kind word. They hated me, called me names and pushed me around because I'm so much weaker than the others. Who gives a damn about the little crybaby who can barely withstand a beating? But then they stopped paying attention to me and then I became ignored and neglected unless they needed someone to push around. So in secret, I honed my abilities, taught myself to be stronger and more powerful." She couldn't help but smirk, almost cruelly, remembering some of the things she was able to do, after years by herself. "And then I come here and it's only more of the same, people treating me like human garbage, insulting me and pushing me away because of who I associate with and where I come from. In all the world, I am almost entirely alone."

There were several long moments of silence and then Trelawney sighed, getting to her feet. She circled the room, walking over to the shelf of several dozen crystal balls and began running her hands over the glass. She nodded as though someone had asked her a question and glance behind her to where Chloe was still seething.

"In my days at Hogwarts, I was a Ravenclaw and an only child. My parents were never overly neglectful, but they did both work, so before my school days, I was often put under the watchful eye of my grandmother. I grew up hearing fantastic stories about the fames Cassandra Trelawney and her uncanny ability to see into the future. I asked several times of my grandmother whether I, too, had that wondrous power of Sight, to know what was to come. Grandmother always laughed and told me I was being silly, that the gift of prophecy had died with Cassandra and I was no more a Seer than I was a bird. At Hogwarts, Divination was treated like a joke. There were no lessons, no classes, no admission that such a thing could even be possible. The other Ravenclaws laughed at me and called me a fool but I refused to turn away from my beliefs no matter what they said. And now, all these years later, I have proven, at least to myself and the few others that truly matter, that the gift of prophecy is real and I am not mad."

"What's the point in telling me all of this, Professor Trelawney? Are you trying to make me feel better or something?"

The ageing woman cocked her head once more. "We are both freaks in our own ways, Miss Weasley. Even those who claim to be normal are merely coming up with fabrications, falsehoods to convince themselves that they are just like everyone else, the same paper thin people from their cookie cutter life. But we know that isn't true, don't we, Miss Weasley? We know that normalcy of any kind simply isn't true."

"But how do you live with that? How can you just so easily accept that if you dare to break out of the mould, people will hate you? I don't understand how you do it."

"You come to accept it is all, Miss Weasley, and life will get easier from there. Not immediately, of course, oh heavens no, but it _does_ get easier if you give it time and refuse to allow the cruel words and hurtful actions to ever be enough to bring you down."

"So I should simply sit back and let it all happen? Let all the bad stuff in life unfold and put on a smile every time because at least I know it will get better some day far from now? What if I want it to get better today, Professor? What if I don't want to live like this any more?"

The bug-eyed professor continued to run her hands over the crystal balls and sighed. "You are sixteen today, are you not, Miss Weasley?" She turned her head to see Chloe nod. "Yes I knew it to be true—the screaming within you, the raging desire to be acknowledged and wanted and appreciated. It's all there, hiding just beneath the surface. You've fought for so long to be liked, just as I have. And it may take you years yet to reach the point that I have reached, where the pettiness of others means nothing any more because I walk the higher path. But that day will come, Miss Weasley, and it will come sooner than you think."

She was now quite convinced tha the Divination professor was either mad, a fraud, or both. Trelawney might have been trying to sound insightful and mystic, but she was only saying the same thing that Professor Longbottom had when she begged him for help.

Adults always acted like they knew all the answers to life and the problems of teenagers, but they only ever gave the same ridiculous response over and over. Chloe had quickly learned that regular adults really weren't all that much more helpful than the ones she'd been locked away with. No matter where she ended up, grown-ups always talked to children and teenagers like they couldn't possibly understand anything.

Chloe stood up, realising that she would find no further answers here with the deranged professor. "Thank you for the tea, Professor, but I think I ought to be going now. I've got an awful lot to do—homework and essays and such—so I'm going to head out. This was a lovely chat and I really appreciated it and…I'll, er, see you around."

"You aren't evil, you know, Miss Weasley" Trelawney said, making the blonde pause at the top of the ladder. "You keep telling yourself that there must be something wrong with you and that's the reason why people won't talk to you. You've convinced yourself that you must be an awful, evil, irredeemable person who isn't worth or friendship or family, but you are wrong, Miss Weasley. You are no monster, but merely a sixteen year old girl who has been given an unfortunate lot in life. This doesn't make you evil, it makes you misunderstood. It doesn't mean that you're irredeemable but rather that those whose friendships you so desperately crave are not worth o f you. How could they possibly understand when you are so far above them? But I assure you that there is noting wrong and you are certainly no freak. Believe me. You are not evil Miss Weasley—though you have encountered true evil today without even realising it."

"I feel evil, though!" she cried, throwing up her hands. "I feel wrong like I'm some kind of monster. Maybe they're all right and I am a freak, an inhuman freak that doesn't belong here. But I want to be liked and I hate feeling this way—how do I fix things, Professor? How do I reach that point where everything gets better? How do I stop feeling like I'm the one in the wrong merely because I exist?"

Trelawney gave her a sympathetic smile, telling Chloe, "Why, my dear, you refuse to let them change you. You refuse to let those who call themselves normal to tell you that you are not." She frowned thoughtfully. "And you stay away fro anyone who claims to be your mother."

Chloe nodded and headed down the wooden ladder. Trelawney, she decided, was mad. She was no closer to the truth than she had been before heading up here.


	66. The trial of Trinh Itawa

Harry grabbed the tray of food from the kitchen in the Aurors' break room and headed down to where the holding cells were located. He knew of several people who thought it unwise to have Harry in such close proximity to a dangerous prisoner like Itawa, let alone delivering food to her on a regular basis, along with playing muggle board games and chatting with the young woman. But what did he care? He was the Head and it was within his power to visit the cells as often as he liked and to treat prisoners as he chose.

His worst nightmares had all blown over with far more ease than he expected. By this point, Diagon Alley was back to normal, although its residents were still shaken up. Trinh's trial was scheduled for later that morning and it was very likely she'd be given a guilty verdict and sentenced to life in Azkaban. Most importantly though was the fact that all charges against Harry himself had been dropped, supposedly due to a lack of evidence, although he strongly suspected that Kingsley had pulled more than a few strings amongst those in the Wizengamot, thankfully convincing enough of them that it would be most unwise to attempt to pin anything on _the_ Harry Potter, saviour to the wizarding world.

Not that he was ungrateful, but it was still a little embarrassing to rely on the fame and power of his name just to get out of a legal battle.

He nodded in the direction of the guard, a sleepy, scowling Archer Cauldwell, before continuing down the poorly lit hallway where they kept the prisoners. There were the usual anti-muggle nuts all together, another cell with a man who had been charged with murdering, a woman who had cursed her whole family to only be able to sing, and about half a dozen of the everyday drunks who were caught using magic in front of muggles.

At the furthest cell, though, located at the end of the long hall of cells was his most popular prisoner as of late—Trinh Itawa, who sat motionless on her caught until Harry came into sight. When she spotted him, Trinh pushed herself onto her feet and stumbled on weak legs towards the bars of her temporary home, wrapping her fingers around the cold metal as she watched him approach, a hungry, hard look in her eyes.

"Good morning, Trinh," he greeted her in a cordial tone, opening the thin slot that allowed him to slide her tray of food in. though the cell was seemingly only a box surrounded by metal columns and a thick iron door with the food slot in the centre, prisoners were actually under a volley of highly powerful charms that prevented them from doing anything stronger than grasping the bars of their cell or else be punished by an unbearable burning sensation.

She stared up at him with big eyes and a scowl formed on her lips. "Today is the day, isn't it, Mr Potter? They'll throw me into Azkaban, throw away the key, and that'll be the end of Trinh Itawa, long-hated and long-forgotten, isn't that right?" She pushed against the bars, ignoring the pain momentarily before pulling away again. "Do you suppose they'll let me at least let me have a window or will I be so deep in the bowels of that hell that I'll never see the light of day again? I'd like to see the sun again at least one more time."

Harry didn't respond immediately, pushing the tray a little more through its slot before letting the door slam shut entirely. "You're guilty, Trinh, you know you are, even if you _do_ keep trying to convince everyone that you aren't entirely at fault, that your mother is to blame, despite having no evidence to back up that claim. You led the assault, you helped to kill several dozen people, and thanks to you, the Ministry was forced to spend more than twenty thousand galleons fixing up Diagon Alley. So, yes, I very much suspect that the rest of your days will be spent living in darkness. You've made a lot of enemies."

"Will they really send a pregnant woman to Azkaban? I _am_ pregnant, after all, and you're my witness since you gave me the test yourself. Couldn't you tell them to hold off the trial until I give birth? Surely Azkaban is no place for an infant."

"We've gone over this before, Trinh," Harry replied with a sigh, running his hands through his hair. "I took it up with Kingsley and Croft and they both agree that pregnancy simply isn't enough of a reason to hold off any longer, no matter how you may feel about the situation. You'll be sent to Azkaban, a skilled team of Healers will be sent to help you when it's time to give birth, and then your child will be given a proper home where he or she can be loved and raised by someone who actually understands how to raise a child."

"Are you saying that I wouldn't be able to raise my own baby, that I'm too incompetent?" snarled Trinh, glowering at him.

The response was a disbelieving look and a roll of the eyes. "Beyond the fact that you'll be in Azkaban for the rest of your life, which, as you said earlier, is no place for a child, you haven't exactly proven yourself to be much of a mother to the child you have currently."

Trinh shook her head, remembering how often in the last few weeks they had discussed the parentage of her most loyal follower, August Batts. "I don't care what those tests say, I should think that I would remember giving birth. August is not my son, he is the son of a dead man and a drunkard, but certainly not me. The tests were wrong— _are_ wrong—and I simply won't believe otherwise. It's impossible."

Harry ran his hands through his hair once more, knowing that Trinh could not be convinced. He could show her all of the proof in the world but she was a stubborn young woman, firm in her beliefs, no matter how wrong they were.

"Just eat your breakfast and make sure that you're ready to go by the time that I come back, do you understand me, Itawa?" His voice turned colder and he did his best to look at her harshly, knowing that he would not be kindly looked upon for seeming too favourable to the woman, not that she made it easy to like her. Harry had seen plenty of prisoners come and go over the years, ranging from those who had made a mistake and truly regretted it to the cold-blooded murderers who wouldn't admit that what they'd done was a crime even under penalty of death. But few were like Trinh Itawa, who merely smiled at him in a sickly sweet manner and snatched the tray of food, retreating back to her bed without a word.

Harry nodded, knowing that was the closest he'd get to a response, and headed back to the front of the cell block, stopping briefly to chat with one of their more regular drunken broom fliers before continuing on. He clapped Archer on the shoulder, making sure that the younger male was alert and ready, then departed, heading up the stairs to the main floor.

Itawa would be convicted, he was certain of that. She was clearly guilty, from the dozens of eyewitnesses to the fact that Harry and his team had all come upon Trinh laughing maniacally in the middle of the streets, held down by the magical bonds cast by those around her.

But until the trial actually began, there was simply nothing that could be done to affect the outcome, so he was better off turning his mind to more important things such as different cases that were still ongoing, since he needed to sift through the piled up evidence and interviews; and perhaps he could use this time to actually schedule out a few weeks in advance to make sure that the winter trainee portion of the program actually went off without a hitch for once. But it certainly served no purpose to dwell on the fate of Trinh Itawa.

* * *

Roxy sat down in the prosecution's witness' box, looking around at those who had also been called. The Wizengamot had made a rule that no one under seventeen was allowed to give testimony, with the argument that there were already so many people and it could possibly lead to even more mental scarring of innocent children.

Sitting in the seat next to her was Aniya, who kept shifting around uneasily, occasionally flashing a nervous smile at her mum and sister, Anarya, to assure them that she was fine. Jan had also found his way amongst the group though he looked about ready to either throw up or burst into tears. Several others from Project Starkid had also shown up to accuse Trinh of committing horrible crimes and there was the occasional parent or sibling who, like Jan, wished to speak on behalf of a family member who was no longer alive.

Against Phuong Itawa's wishes, the Wizengamot had chosen to open the case up to the actions of Project Starkid as well, though the group had been officially disbanded. Phuong was refusing to testify at the moment, but there was still the small possibility that she might be fired and fined for what she had done, though it was obvious that she would be making the claim that she hadn't been personally involved with the project in a long time. She would let her daughter and others take the fall on her behalf and Phuong would get of with little more than a slap on the wrist if she was punished at all.

On the defence's side was the now familiar face of August Batts, who Roxy was still struggling to grasp was the son of Trinh. He looked as much like his mother as Roxy looked like her father—which was to say, almost none at all.

He stared down at his hands, ignoring those seated on either side of him. His hair covered his eyes so that no one could read the expression on his face. Even more than Jan, he gave off the impression that if anyone were to so much as touch him on the shoulder, he'd burst into tears and entirely fall apart.

August was the only person serving as a witness who was under the age of seventeen.

There were also several members from Starkid that Roxy recognised as those who had stood next to Trinh back in July, clearly her loyal followers to the very end. But different from everyone else in the group was a tanned man with curly dark blond hair and the same pale green eyes as Sergio McClane. She presumed that this was Rafael, the man who had been the most recent person to run Project Starkid after Phuong's departure. He was his son with thirty years added onto his face, though he didn't look half-bad for someone who was probably in his late forties or early fifties at this point.

She shook her head, wondering where that sudden thought had come from; she pushed it from her head and continued to look around the courtroom. Her mother was sitting with the rest of those who were merely here to watch the case unfold. Uncle Harry was standing by the main doors, waiting for them to bring Trinh in; Desmond and Jo had both been unable to come watch the proceedings—he because of a cousin's death and she due to work. But there were plenty enough people watching that they wouldn't be missed.

Just then the doors flew open and the members of the Wizengamot filed in, walking across the marble floor and heading up the stairs to their seats. Only a few paused to say something to Harry or shake his hand before they walked on.

An order was given for everyone to rise as Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, flanked by the prosecution and defence lawyers, entered the room. They all waited dutifully as the lawyers moved to their respective sides and the Minister took his seat at the front and centre of the Wizengamot. Then came the announcement that they were allowed to sit down once more.

Last of all to enter was the accused herself, Trinh Itawa, her ankles and wrists magically bound together. She stumbled only once and turned to glare at Archer Cauldwell, who had led her in, before settling at her seat in the absolute centre of the room, replacing the glare with a cold smirk that made her look inhuman.

She was a monster, a remorseless monster who had no regard for those currently surrounding her now, no regard for the lives she had helped to steal away. When several people began to boo her, Itawa merely raised her cuffed hands and waved them at the crowd, looking entirely unperturbed by the sheer amount of hatred being thrown her way. And why should she care? Everyone here knew she was guilty so what was the point in playing the innocent victim if that would obviously never work for her?

Kingsley leant forward, looking at the woman sharply. "Today is the thirteenth of October in the year two thousand and twenty-nine. The case number is two-nine-four-eleven. Defence is led by Annette Towler, prosecution by Jethbert Skinner. The accused will now state her name and age for the Wizengamot."

"Trinh Itawa, thirty-one years old," came the equally sharp response form the still smirking criminal. "And can I just say, oughtn't we just skip to the bit where you lock me away forever and throw away the key? That's what we're all here for, after all, to see me punished because you think I'm some sort of awful, inhuman sociopath."

"The accused will refrain from making outbursts. Now," Kingsley looked at his papers, shuffling them around for a moment before continuing, "according to our records, not only do you not currently have a wand, Ms Itawa, but you have never been registered for one. Can you confirm that this is the case? Did you at any time have a wand?"

The woman rolled her eyes and refused to answer, but when Kingsley merely repeated his question, she let out a heavy sigh, replying, "Well, I can't very well buy my own wand when I've got no money and the first time I ever stepped foot outside of the confines of Project Starkid was when I was twenty-five years old. So, no, I do not have a wand nor have I ever nor do I ever want one in the future."

Kingsley checked off one of his many forms before continuing. "Very well, Ms Itawa. I will now read off the charges against you in today's trial. Charge number one, that you were caught on the twenty-seventh of September in a public area with the intent and follow-through of causing a 'disturbance to the peace'. Charge two is that you hold responsibility for the deaths of the fifty-six people who died that day, a tragedy the likes of which has not been seen since the days of the Dark Lord. The third and final charge is that you are accused of participating in and having knowledge of the kidnapping or purchasing of minors to build an army that is suspected might have been intended for the very battle that you led. How do you plead?"

"Well, obviously I'm not guilty since I've been set up to take the fall for all of this."

There was quite a loud outburst following this statement as many people began to yell and hurl insults in Itawa's direction, calling her a liar, a monster, a whore, and much worse. Though the Minister kept calling for their order and attention, it was several minutes before the room was calm enough for him to continue his line of questioning.

"Ms Itawa, can you elaborate further as to why it is that you save you've been 'set up'? Who exactly has set you up and what purpose would they have to do so in the first place?"

Trinh's eyes flashed dangerously as she glanced in the direction of her mother. "I'm aware of how much influence and power my mother has over this court amongst many others who are in positions of authority. Though she has always passed herself off as a mere humble Wizengamot member, many of you will recall that she once ran Project Starkid from its inception in 1998 until she handed it over to Rafael McClane in 2014.

"Excuse me, Ms Itawa," said an older man from the Wizengamot. He adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "We are, of course, aware of your mother's affiliation. However, the records clearly show that until 2014, all of those placed under your care were not stolen or bought. Phuong sent out a message to those who found themselves burdened with children too powerful to handle and she legally achieved guardianship of those who came to her. It is only after Phuong's departure that the project turned to, ahem, _darker_ means of acquiring its participants. Your mother, therefore, cannot be held responsible for any of this."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you want to believe. But keep in mind that amongst those she placed into this programme were my siblings and I as well as the children of Rafael McClane."

"Siblings?" The man furrowed his brow and looked to Kingsley. "We have on record that both you and Sergio McClane are only children, do we not, Minister?" Kingsley nodded. "Unless these siblings you speak of are metaphorical, in which case the situation remains the same, that they were willingly given away by their parents and therefore—"

"Let me clear this up," Phuong announced, also standing up. She smiled at the court, a pleasant, charming smile. "I do in fact have other biological children with my now deceased husband, Binh Itawa. However, due to the nature of my work, I felt it to be unsafe to announce the presence of my other children to the public for fear of what might happen to them. I know it was wrong of me to not register them but you must agree that I had a considerable reason for concern."

"And the names of your other children, if you don't mind my asking?" said Kingsley. "So that we might have them registered now, at least?"

"My daughters Trinh and Thanh-Ha were born on 7 August, 1998. We chose to only announce Trinh's birth at the time because she was the stronger daughter and we were told that Thanh-Ha might not live. Quyen was born the following Christmas Eve in 1999, my first son. Then Chau on 17 June in 2002. my second son, Lanh, on 28 March in 2005. And finally, Kim-Ly, on 6 May, 2007. After that, I told my husband 'no more'! I'd had enough children of my own and Starkid brought me so much more. Of course, though I love all of my children, following Binh's death, I found it to be necessary to step down from my job in order to grieve."

Kingsley nodded. "And Mr McClane? Your unregistered children? Our records show that your wife, Sarah Carr, died giving birth to your son Sergio on 2 April, 2003? You never filed for another marriage license, though records show that you had two other women live with you at one point or another in the last twenty years."

McClane, in a voice that belonged to a kindly professor rather than a murderer, explained. "My second wife, Heather, was a very private woman who did not want the public eye on her. Considering her death in 2009, I felt it prudent to stay quite about my third wife, Evelia, for fear of losing her too."

"What a liar!" Trinh yelled, laughing. "He just doesn't want to admit that he forced a nineteen and twenty year old into marrying him and that he killed them both! Actually, he killed all three of them, even the first one, his beloved Sarah. Look at his records, see how many Draughts of Living Death was given and all of it disguised as Sleeping potions."

"Ms Itawa, please refrain from further outbursts. Now Mr McClane, the rest of your children from these marriages?"

"Of course." Like Phuong, he gave the court a charming smile. "After Sergio came four children with Heather. Abrahan on 4 May, 2005. Madalena on 25 September, 2006. Cassandra on 19 March, 2008. and lastly, Nataniel on 12 October, 2009. with Evelia came my final child, my daughter Naira on 3 September, 2001, a very sweet girl, she just turned eighteen. But I must confess my confusion as to what this has to do with the trial at hand. It is not our other children who are on trial, but rather Ms Trinh who is under question."

Apparently, Kingsley agreed as he turned to look at Trinh, who scowled back at him, crossing her arms in a defensive manner.

"I'm merely pointing out how odd it is that the two people most involved subjected their own children to this culture and then lied to everyone about it." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I _am_ being set up to take the blame for all of this. I'm just a member of Starkid who was only put into a position of power under order of Rafael. I was also told very little of the outside world and the attack on Diagon Alley was a direct order from Mr McClane himself, who is still working under my mother to this day. He ordered me to round up the arrested Starkid members as well as anyone else I could find and prepare for battle. Obviously I did what he said, considering he was the closest thing I had to a real father, although some of the things he did to us weren't very fatherly in my opinion, I hate to say it."

"How do you mean? What exactly did he do to you and the other children that you feel to be wrong? And remember, Ms Itawa, lying in a court case is a serious offence."

"He'd beat us if we talked back or moved too slowly or weren't able to do as ordered the first time around. Sometimes kids would get snatched up and tortured for hours, supposedly to make them stronger or more cooperative, although I always have suspected that McClane enjoyed it secretly, watching little kids cry as he hurt them. It also wasn't uncommon to go to bed at night and wake the next morning to find someone from your room was gone and no one would speak of them again. I'm sure Rafael would love to tell you that they merely got sick or couldn't handle the pressure that was being placed on them, but be honest here. This was a Ministry-sanctioned programme—couldn't they have taken these kids to seek medical help if they were really sick? No, I'm just one more victim of Starkid and now my own mother is attempting to pin her own crimes on me, as well as the crimes of Rafael McClane."

"What about the claims that you also took part in these torture sessions and the sudden disappearances of children?"

She smirked at Kingsley. "I presume you recall the testimonies of those involved in the horrible actions of those at Hogwarts during the 1997-1998 school year? And you also most likely know that all of those who testified on that defence spoke adamantly about the intense pressure placed upon them by some of the adults at the school to comply with the order to torture and terrorise their fellow students?"

"Are you claiming that Rafael McClane and the other adults pressured you into your actions, that you aren't responsible for what you did because you did not fight back?"

"' _Listen to us or we'll make your life miserable_ '. That's what they would say. If you didn't comply, you didn't last very long. And, truth be told, I value my own life over some eight year old who wouldn't fall in line."  
Kingsley wrote something down in his notes. "Now, Ms Itawa, by this claim, you are telling us that it was only under the order of Rafael McClane that you prepared an army to overtake Diagon Alley and kill anyone in your line of sight. Is this correct?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. I got a letter from McClane telling me that it's my duty, my absolute necessity to go rescue our brothers and sisters from Azkaban and begin training them in the art of fighting as I also go around looking for those who would be willing to take up our side. Then, he told me, I should rent out a space in the town and wait for further instructions. A second letter came the night before the battle, detailing when to come out and how to move and take over. I swear to you that I was not the one to come up with any of this, merely following the orders that I was given."

"Hm." The Minister glanced around at the evidence set before him. "Yet I don't seem to have any letters from Rafael McClane. Would perhaps have them or know where they are so that I can add them to the evidence? Having proof of this calibre would certainly help to diminish your sentence and improve your credibility."

Trinh's whole face went red as she glanced down at her hands, for the first time finding herself caught off-guard. "Er, no, I can't show you the letters." At Kingsley's raised eyebrows, she explained, "the letters—he told me to burn them afterwards so that no one could ever see them. He—he threatened me, saying if I didn't burn them, he'd hurt me or even possibly have me killed. I was afraid, so again, I complied."

"That is not true!" cried Rafael, causing the whole room to burst with noise once more. "She's lying, there are no letters, I will not be dragged down with you, young lady! I am no murderer—she's the only guilty one here!"

"Then what happened to all of those kids you tortured and interrogated? If you aren't a murderer, tell us where they went! Or better yet, show us their bodies because we all know that you killed them or else had them killed, which is essentially the same thing at the end of the day; you're still forced to sleep with the guilt of it."

"She's lying, don't believe a word she says! Those children didn't die under my care, they were simply moved somewhere else where they would fit better, given their hindrances. The only members who died were due to Trinh's own poor ability to make decisions and had nothing at all to do with me."

The Minister held up his hand and raised his head to look in the direction of Harry, who until then had stood just a few metres behind Trinh, his hands behind his back and a blank look on his face as he tried to refrain from reacting.

"Did you find any evidence that might back up Ms Itawa's claim during your raid at the end of July?" he asked Harry, who nodded and pulled a file from within a pocket of his robes, enlarging it before he handed the stack over to Kingsley. "Interesting," the man muttered in a low voice, flipping through the file. "It would seem that Auror Potter and his men found several rooms set aside for torture as well of the ashes of, as is labelled, over forty youths all of whom, I'm sure, if we were to look through the records, could be found in connection to Project Starkid. If what you say is true, Mr McClane, then why are there ashes when nobody died under your care?"  
The project head glared in the direction of Harry. "Ah, those. Those were children who grew too sick to be properly cared for—a bad case of Dragon Pox a few years back, I'm afraid. But, please, I must press the question of why we are wasting our time listening to the claims of a liar and a sociopath? I had been led to believe it was the young Ms Itawa who is on trial here today, not me nor my associates."

"And yet you come here and sit on the side of her defence but do nothing to defend her. Can you explain _that_ , Mr McClane?"

"Of course, Minister. You see, within our project, we encourage the children to see each other as siblings and the leaders as their mothers and fathers. The relationship I have with Trinh coerces me to even now see her as my daughter despite the crimes she has committed and as all good fathers must do, I come running when I fear that one of my children may be in danger. As to why I do not defend her, well, I may be her pseudo-father but I cannot stand to let an injustice go unpunished nor will I allow my own name to be dragged through the mud. I am here, in truth, to defend _myself_ , my good name and reputation. I will mourn the loss of Trinh, but she is truly the only guilty party here. If you would instead like me to move to the side of the prosecution, I shall comply."

Kingsley waved his hands impatiently. "No need to take up time with that, I believe you've given us all the information we need. Rather, I would like to continue my questioning of Ms Itawa." He turned his focus back to Trinh, who appeared to be growing more nervous with every passing minute. "Ms Itawa, if you wouldn't mind, could you please go over the actions you took after receiving this supposed letter from Mr McClane?"

"Well, I burnt it, as instructed, then headed to where the army was staying for the time being. Once they were all gathered, my..." She gagged on the next word, coughing when it would not come out. Trinh glanced in the direction of her mother, who merely smirked at the younger woman. "Uh, sorry, _I_ gave them their instructions of what was expected of them and got the whole group arranged as they had been trained. We were joined shortly thereafter by a fringe group called Phoenix—a bastardization of the infamous Order of the Phoenix, if I understand it all correctly. Anyway, now having everyone we needed, we marched through the streets of Diagon Alley, where I had the army break into smaller chunks. I led the main one, the largest, and as I had been ordered, encouraged my siblings and fellow soldiers to destroy everything in sight from building to people. I know some of them didn't want to hurt anyone so I did my best to keep the little ones and the scares ones to the centre of the group where they would be both safe and not have to do much. Quickly after, we had overtaken much of the shopping district."

"What about Roxanne Weasley and her friends? When did they begin to show resistance against your forces?"  
"Oh, almost immediately! I have no doubt that they were laying in wait for us, hoping to swoop in as heroes and victors of the light side, having their generation's Death Eater battle to confront and overtake. Once I met up with Weasley herself is when the real mess began. The girl was out of her mind, screaming obscenities at me, threatening my life and my very existence because she hold me in great contempt. But then, my..." Again Trinh choked on the word. "Weasley overtook me—her and her friends—overpowering me and knocking me out. I presume they did the same thing to my most loyal soldier, the boy named August Batts, though I do not understand the continued delusion of all those around me that I am the boy's mother. After all, do I look like him in the slightest? He's not my son, I will tell you that, though I do love him like a younger brother. Hearing he had been hurt brought me great pain, something I will never forgive or forget."

On the side of the defence, August grew very red in the face, embarrassed to hear Trinh admit for the first time that she truly did feel affection for him in some way.

"Actually, Minister Shacklebolt, if you'd kindly, could I clarify something?" Phuong was on her feet once more. She received a nod from Kingsley, who would later claim he had no memory of having done so. "My daughter Trinh, as a foolish teenager, fell in love with another member of the project. I know the relationship began at least by the time that my daughter was sixteen and her 'partner', Nathan Rodoffi, was eighteen. We did our best to keep them apart, but shortly before she turned eighteen, Trinh fell pregnant, which resulted in the boy known as August Batts. Nathan unfortunately took his own life shortly before the birth of his child and it was decided that for the mental well-being that her memories of the event be wiped for fear that she may become distraught following the birth."

A low murmur rippled through the courtroom as Trinh nearly launched herself from her seat, rushing at her mother as she shrieked like an animal. It took Harry and two other Aurors to subdue her and drag Trinh back to her chair, the woman kicking and screaming the whole time as even stronger bonds were placed over her.

"Do you see, Minister Shacklebolt, why we have recommended isolation following her incarceration? The girl is not mentally stable enough to be around others for any real length of time." The prosecution had a sharp, nasally voice that made it sound like he was permanently on the recovery from a cold that refused to ever really leave.

The defence, a pinch-faced woman not more than a decade older than Trinh herself, said nothing in protest. From the way her mouth was firmly set, it was clear she also believed Trinh to be wholly guilty and deserving of a terrible punishment. There was no one left that was truly on Trinh's side as even young August was now staring at his confirmed biological mother with an expression of shock and horror.

Kingsley sighed and indicated that Trinh be physically tied to her seat to prevent any further outbursts. "Very well, let's continue, shall we? I would like to begin by calling witnesses to the afore accused crimes, beginning with Marcus Abeman."

The trial lasted several more hours as witnesses from both sides came up to testify. The defence attorney said hardly anything and opted out of all cross-examinations while the prosecution tore into the stories given to him by those who had come on behalf of Trinh. By the end of their testimonies, only August refused to give in and speak against his mother, claiming she had done no wrong and could not be held responsible if she was merely following orders the whole time.

Those who had come to accuse Trinh of her terrible crimes, on the other hand, had no problem laying into the thirty-one year old, listing in great detail exactly how she had wronged them. From parents breaking down about their stolen children to members of the project confessing that Trinh had personally beaten them or that she'd made them assist as she got rid of a dead body to the dozens of fingers pointed her way, accusing Trinh of being the sole perpetrator of the attack on Diagon Alley—no one held back as they dragged Trinh Itawa through the mud.

When Roxy spoke, it was to mention how Itawa had harassed her for months, giving the Minister the letters from the past year as proof. She talked about how the older woman had appeared and stolen Aniya before killing several of her so-called siblings when they were finally given a chance at freedom. Lastly, Roxy recounted her side of the battle at Diagon Alley, though when she tried to mention having seen Phuong Itawa attack her own daughter rather than Roxy having done anything, she, too, found herself unable to speak the words. Instead, she was forced to agree with Trinh's recount of the situation even though she knew deep down that everything had not occurred in the way that she was describing it. But hard as she tried, Roxy found it impossible to even so much as say Phuong's name without falling into a coughing fit.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Kingsley announced tha the time had come for the Wizengamot to make their decision—not just about Trinh but also whether Rafael McClane would be punished and if so, then how?  
"Those of favour of convicting Rafael Matias Luis McClane of child neglect and conspiracy, raise your hand." More than two-thirds raised their hands. "Very well, the Wizengamot has chosen to convict Mr McClane. He will pay four thousand galleons to the families he has hurt and will spend one year in Azkaban. As for Trinh Itawa, who is accused of child neglect, conspiracy, murder, and attempted terrorism resulting in the destruction of property and life?" Every single member of the Wizengamot raised their hands. "Very well, the Wizengamot has chosen to convict Ms Itawa. She will spend the remainder of her days in isolation at Azkaban with no chance of parole."

Trinh began to scream once more though she could not move from her seat. "I'm pregnant, you bastards! I'm pregnant—are you honestly going to through a pregnant woman in isolation? Or did the Minister not tell you that bit? Oh, yeah, I'm fucking pregnant and you're throwing me in prison?! Who's the true monsters here, huh? You tell me!"

"Yes, that reminds me. After the birth of her child, custody has been appointed to Phuong Itawa and no visitation between mother and child shall be allowed, due to the nature of Ms Itawa's crimes. This court session is now closed and dismissed. You may now all leave. Mr Potter, if you wouldn't mind helping to her new residence?"

Harry nodded and he, along with his two younger Aurors, slowly stood Trinh to her feet and carried the woman out of the room since she herself could not currently walk due to the sheer number of charms holding her down. Her shrieking could be heard long after they left the room and only died off when the quartet disappeared in the elevators.

Slowly, as most of them were in a state of mild shock, the witness boxes on either side began to empty. A fourth and fifth Auror arrived to escort McClane to Azkaban; he went along with them far more willingly, though, judging by his scowl, was not happy to have to go to that miserable prison at all, even for just a year.

"Wow," Aniya said to Roxy as they walked together from the courtroom. "The outcome was expected, I know, but still. Actually seeing her carted away? Knowing that she's finally gone? I can hardly believe it. Oh, and all that with Trinh having a kid already and now she's pregnant? How crazy is that? Like, that totally shocked me, you know?" Aniya sighed, grabbing Roxy's hand. "I'm just glad all of this is finally over and life can go back to being relatively normal."

"Yeah, me too."

Yet deep inside of her, Roxy couldn't fight the idea that all of this _wasn't_ over—that Trinh's conviction was merely the first step to an even more grand and hideous plan of Phuong's. After all, why else would she drop the charges against Uncle Harry and allow her precious project to be permanently stopped? And why else would she allow her business partner and eldest child to take the fall for everything? No, Phuong was planning something else, something far worse than just destroying Diagon Alley.

And where the hell had the Faceless One disappeared to? If this was all part of his master plan, then shouldn't the daemon be gloating about the fact that, after all her efforts, Roxy still hadn't taken him down? Instead, he'd been strangely quiet over the past couple weeks, as had James Potter now that she thought about it—he'd given her Freddie's message and vanished. She highly doubted that either of them would ever truly disappear—with time, the Faceless One would strike again and then James Potter would appear once more to force Roxy into a fight she wasn't sure she was prepared for.

But for now, Aniya was right. The whole situation had calmed down, at least for the moment, and they could finally go back to just being average people. _For now._


	67. Would you kindly?

Roxy got up the next morning, ate her breakfast, went to work, then had a drink with friends before stumbling back to the flat to fall asleep. The next morning, she woke up to begin the process anew—for two straight weeks. It felt like she was caught in a rut, doing the same bloody thing over and over again when she ought to be celebrating along with everyone else about the apparent victory they had accrued from Trinh's imprisonment. After all, as far as anyone else knew, the battle was over and the enemy had been defeated.

 _But they didn't see things the same way that she did._

There was, as always, that voice in the back of her head, wiggling its way into her thoughts to remind Roxy that she was probably being paranoid and none of this was really a problem any more. What if Trinh being thrown in Azkaban truly was the end of her problems and she could finally go back to living a normal, happy life free from the Faceless One?

No—no, that couldn't be right. He would never give up so easily and let Roxy get away with beating him. Surely he would come back sooner or later, stronger than before and with twice as many soldiers at his beck and call, ready to take her down if he only said the word?

She did her best to push all of those thoughts from her head and continue on with her life as though everything _was_ back to normal. So she woke up and staggered through her routine day after day, always keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary but also with that same fake smile on her face, assuring anyone who asked that everything was fine and there was absolutely nothing wrong with her.

But, though the Faceless One did not show his face, it seemed that he was not yet ready to let go of Roxy unscathed.

* * *

 _Dear Roxanne Weasley,_

 _You probably don't remember me, as I barely recalled who you were after seeing your name in the newspapers, but my name is Kaelyn Hayes, a Slytherin in my seventh year when you were just barely sorted into my house. Obviously, due to our age gap, we never became particularly close as it was never very fashionable to befriend the firsties. Perhaps if I had not fallen into that mentality, you and I might have been friends or at least acquaintances._

 _After all, we did speak at least once, if you'll recall, back when I was still dating your older cousin, James. Perhaps you don't remember, as I'm sure it played a far less impressive role in your life compared to mine. But you were the little girl who offered me advice when I was struggling to repair my relationship with James. Clearly, it was too late to really matter much, but your attempt to help—advice from a sweet little twelve year old girl—inspired me to realise that I_ did _deserve to be loved._

 _Yet, I must confess that I do not write to you merely to reminiscence about events that occurred nearly a decade ago._

 _Your name, appearing in those articles that talk about your bravery and what amazing thing you did to defend Diagon Alley? I thought very little about it all, I will say, until I received a letter from the Ministry of Magic that informed me that they were in possession of something that belonged to my family, and I being the oldest living member—both my parents having died two years ago—was asked to come collect this mystery item._

 _Do you know what it was, Roxanne Weasley? Do you know what they gave me? The corpse of my oldest brother, whom I had not seen in nearly eight years. He died in your battle, Roxanne Weasley. He died trying to take your life away._

 _I wish to speak to you. 29 October, 3pm at Merlin's Café. Come alone and tell no one, do you understand me, Roxanne?_

— _Kaelyn Hayes_

* * *

She sat down at her usual table, the one closest to the fireplace. She had missed this place; Roxy could barely recall the last time she had come here and so, as both a way to avoid looking suspicious and also because she greatly missed the food, Roxy ordered a shepherd's pie and a Butterbeer, telling the waiter she would be joined shortly by a friend who may also want something to eat, though if they had her food ready before her companion arrived, it was fine if they brought it out ahead of time.

Shortly before three, Kaelyn Hayes arrived, though she was not alone. Roxy had to think where she had seen him before, but from his scruffy brown hair and expression reminiscent of a kicked dog, she finally managed to place him as the timid young server at The Leaky Cauldron who worked there the day she had broken up with Kieran around this time last year.

"Hello, Roxanne Weasley. I'm Kaelyn Hayes, this is my cousin, Gregory Boot," the older woman said, indicating to herself and the boy as they took their seats. "I believe you are also familiar with our cousin Matilda Longbottom? I heard she was in the battle with you."

"Wait, you guys are related to _Tilly?_ " Roxy looked between the two cousins in disbelief. "She never told me she had any cousins and certainly not any in _Slytherin._ If I had known...hell, she would never have been able to say shite to me for the rest of my life, that hypocritical bitch."  
Kaelyn nodded. "Yes, well, she is, in fact, our cousin whether she is willing to accept it or not. But our tense familial relationship is only a small part of the question at hand. Roxanne, I must ask you— _beseech_ you—to look at this picture and tell me if you recall seeing him last month at all when Trinh Itawa attempted to overtake Diagon Alley.

She handed Roxy a photo of a boy who looked rather similar to Gregory, though taller and clearly exhibiting far more confidence. He had somewhat shaggy, light brown hair with pale, freckled skin and even paler blue eyes that held both laughter and a sense of restlessness as he crookedly smiled up at Roxy. The boy was hiding something behind his back, perhaps his wand or some sort of prank. But, as hard as she focused on the picture, she could not say she'd ever seen him before, though had an idea of who he was.

"Is this the brother that died, then?" she asked Kaelyn, who bobbed her head up and down sadly. "Well, I'm sorry, but I don't recognise him. If he and I crossed paths that day, his face was hidden the whole time. Besides that, wouldn't you say that he's a bit old for the likes of Project Starkid? If you haven't seen him in eight years, he'd be, what, thirty?"

"Twenty-seven. But he wasn't in Starkid, no. My brother was talented but not quite in the way they were looking for. However, while I was following the trial of Itawa, I noticed that several people mentioned a fringe group called Phoenix? My brother, the last time that I ever heard from him, wrote to me about a newly formed movement by the same name. He painted them as the newest wave of equality, a future that would bring us all into a bright age where everyone, regardless of blood type or magical skill, would be treated the same. At the time, it sounded wonderful but now that they've been connected to the likes of Project Starkid, I can't imagine that the group was as pure in their intentions as my brother was led to believe."

"Then why wouldn't he just leave once he figured out their true intentions? Surely they couldn't have kept such a huge secret from him for eight years? I can't imagine them being able to pull something of that scale off for so long before people start to catch on."

 _What about Hugo? How long was he a member? Did he ever figure out the truth—and if so, was he okay with his actions?_

"I don't know," Kaelyn confessed, looking despondent. "I really don't understand why he would do something like this. I mean, he was always such a kind, understanding older brother. He'd help anyone who asked, no matter what house they were in or what kind of blood they had. Matthew...Matthew had this idea that it was the job of everyone to make the world a better place. It's why he wanted to become an Auror after graduation, because he thought by doing so, he could help make life better for the unfortunate. But the Matthew I know would _never_ try to kill anyone. He was a good person."

"Hm." Roxy leant back in thought as the waiter returned with her food and took Kaelyn and Greg's orders. Matthew sounded a lot like Hugo—a nice, friendly guy who, _hopefully_ , was tricked by people claiming that they would be the ones to help him accomplish great things.

Wait...his story was similar to Hugo's, almost identical in fact, and Hugo claimed that he had participated in the attack against his will. What if it hadn't just been that one time with Hugo, that Trinh or Phuong had bent others to their will?

And during the trial, it seemed that Trinh had been trying to accuse her mother of gathering together Phoenix but couldn't get the statement out, just like any time that Roxy tried to mention the older Itawa. What if Trinh had been trying to tell the truth, that her mother had overtaken the thoughts of innocent people like Hugo or Matthew Hayes, turning them into mindless killers who thought they were helping to better the world?  
"That's it," Roxy said to herself, having forgotten that Greg and Kaelyn were still sitting there, waiting for a response. "That's how she's gotten as far in life as she has, why she wasn't made to stand trial—it's why everyone believes the garbage that pours out of her mouth."

"Sorry, but how is who doing what, exactly? I feel like you've jumped about a chapter ahead in the book without telling anyone."

Roxy looked up at Kaelyn, surprised to see that the older woman was still there and that they were sitting in Merlin's Café., surrounded by people. "Sorry," she said, "I got lost in my own thoughts. See, I have this cousin named Hugo, okay? He's the younger child of Ron and Hermione Granger-Weasley, so he's always felt pushed to follow in their footsteps. And I ran into him at the battle last month, only he wasn't acting like himself. It turns out that someone had hijacked his brain and made him try to hurt people when he normally would never do anything of the sort. And I finally figured out why—Phuong Itawa has the inhuman ability to twist minds to do what she wants. She did it to my cousin, your brother, and probably most of those in Phoenix. I don't know how early on she showed up, but it's possible she's the one who enticed Matthew to join and then kept hold of him for the next eight years until she could finally act on her plan."

"So what you're saying is mind control? She used mind control to gather an army and then got off totally free without anyone calling her out or even realising what she'd done? Why didn't the people from Phoenix speak up and mention her existence beforehand or even during the trial?"

"Well, think about it. If she's so powerful that she can bend the entirety of Phoenix—about eighty to one hundred people, mind you—to her will, don't you think she could do it again to keep them from speaking out? Don't you think she could control the Wizengamot? I'm not sure how it all fits into her grand plan, but we're talking about a woman who lied about the existence of most of her kids, erased the memory of a relationship and pregnancy from Trinh's mind, then pinned all of the past two month's events on her. And if you didn't see in the report of the trial, Trinh's nearly three months pregnant, but her own mother got her locked away. Phuong Itawa is even worse than her daughter because she genuinely doesn't care about anyone who isn't herself. I think Trinh probably cared for at least August's father before they killed him and she clearly cares for August as well, even if she pretends not to."

Kaelyn tilted her head, looking at Roxy in confusion. "What are you trying to say, that you sympathise with a sociopathic murderer? That you _agree_ with what Trinh did to those people just because she had a rough upbringing?"

"No, no." Roxy shook her head profusely. "Absolutely not. She's a vicious and vile excuse for a human being who deserves to be locked away for the rest of her life. But I am saying that I can at least understand _why_ she did some of the things she did, even though I certainly don't condone or sympathise with what happened."

"She's a murderer. Because of her, my brother is dead and I'll never get to speak to him again. Because of her, I had to bury my parents two years ago, letting them both die thinking that their oldest son was gone forever, vanished from the face of the earth. Because of her, I had to bury my oldest brother and explain to my younger siblings where Matthew had been all these years and why the Ministry was saying he died a coward's death. Do you know what it's like to see your sibling lowered into the ground?"

Roxy, a big caught off-guard that Kaelyn hadn't connected Roxy to her own losses, nodded. "Freddie, _my_ older brother. He died six years back, hit in the head trying out for a pro-Quidditch team. He was nineteen, he was thirteen. Not even nine months later, my dad took his own life and we started the whole grieving process anew. It fucked my mum up so bad, she refused to even glance into Freddie's room after he died and she hasn't gone near Quidditch since."

"Oh. _You're_ Freddie Weasley's sister?" Her eyes went wide. "I see his name in the paper every year and wonder what life might have been life if he was still around. He tried to keep me and James together." Kaelyn fell quiet as the waiter delivered the remaining food to their table. "But that still doesn't excuse what she did."

"I'm not saying it does," replied Roxy evenly. "Only that, yes, I too can sympathise with the loss of a brother and a parent."

Greg, who had remained silently up until this point, suddenly blurted out, "Would you kin'ly?" He glanced between the two females, looking proud of himself as he puffed out his chest.

"Sorry, what did you just say?" Roxy asked, blinking at the teenage boy. She'd heard that phrase before, although she couldn't quite place it.

"Would you kin'ly?" he repeated, and though he was still smiling, his grin faltered a bit under Roxy's intense gaze. "Some o' the older boys who work a' The Leaky say i' all the time. 'pparen'ly i's somethin' they heard a' their other jobs or somethin'. They snap i' a' me whenever they wan' me t' do work for 'em. _'Greg, you grea' dol', would you kin'ly clean that' shi' off the floor be'ore I pu' my boo' up your arse?'_ I's jus' a phrase is all, don' mean anythin' far as I know."

"These boys that work with you, are they the same group who were working there last year, those thuggish boys who are probably only a year or two out of school if they ever graduated in the first place?" Roxy asked, recalling the boys she'd seen hanging around The Leaky Cauldron, the ones who wore the uniform but never seemed to do any real work.

Greg nodded. "Lars and Jacob and Malcolm," he said slowly in the voice of someone who had memorised the names of his long-time attackers. "I don' know where they work though tha' isn' wit' me, so I could'n' tell you."

"That's fine, Greg, I don't need to know where else they claim to work because I don't think they _have_ jobs elsewhere regardless of what they might say." Roxy leant over to grab the papers she'd been carrying in her bag, transcripts from Trinh's trial. She flipped through the papers until she found the right page. "Here, right here, Phuong stands up and uses the phrase 'would you kindly'. Then here and here, several different members from Phoenix either directly mention or reference the phrase as well. It shows up a total of seventeen times over the course of the trial but Phuong was the first to actually say it while everyone else who followed after was a confirmed Phoenix member and each one of them mentioned an unknown 'someone' that they recall using that phrase shortly before the battle began."

"I'm afraid I don't quite see what you're trying to say. What does a phrase have to do with mind control and my brother's death? Or...what, 'would you kindly' is like a trigger phrase? That's what set off the instructions for mind control? Is that what you think it means?"

"That is _exactly_ what I mean, yes, Kaelyn. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that, perhaps, the whole of Phoenix was gathered a little while before it all began and Phuong came out to give this long, inspiring speech that was just full of that one phrase over and over, slipped in so subtly that no one noticed as all the while the group was worked into a state of mind that, at Phuong's command, they would do whatever is ordered of them."

"And that's how she stays out of legal trouble with the Wizengamot!" Kaelyn said eagerly, clapping a hand over her mouth when people looked their way. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "If they begin to question her motives all she has to do is say that one phrase and they probably fall in line just as fast as Phoenix did. It's why didn't get into trouble earlier this month while her partner received a whole year and her daughter received life in Azkaban. They won't think of questioning or interrogating her if she suppresses the urge every time."

Roxy nodded, glad someone was agreeing with her that the danger was not yet fully gone. "Phuong's been in power for ears this way and it's very likely that things will stay that way unless someone stops hers."

"Yeah...I know you organised and executed that whole battle but this is one of the most powerful people in Britain that you're talking about. Don't tell me you're going to try to take her down as well? One person can only have so much luck before they hit a wall and have nowhere else to go. You're a smart kid, Roxanne, and I'd hate to see you get hurt because you tried to go too far. Itawa will crush you."

"Well, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but no, I'm not saying we should go after Itawa just yet. You're the first person I've told any of this to anyway, you and Greg, and I'd like to get a few more people's opinions before I start climbing what will no doubt be one of the highest mountains I'll ever have to face."

"One of?" Kaelyn gave her a curious look, but Roxy merely shook her head; now was not the time to go into the Faceless One and all of the effort that would be required to take him down, especially since, as far as Roxy could tell, it wasn't her place to finish him off anyway.

"I think we've done as much as we can at this point—me, you, the Circle, my uncle. There's no real way to prove any of the claims we just made and besides, you are right in saying that she has too much power, at least right now. It's a matter of waiting for our chance to strike and determining how to move quickly and efficiently." Roxy reached across the table, looking Kaelyn in the eyes. "I truly am sorry about everything that happened to your brother. I've only recently begun to realise the true, full effects of my actions and not all of it has been good, unfortunately. It's time to back off and let Phuong thing she's won—let her think that _I_ think that _I've_ won—but continue searching for the truth, search for ways of preventing her from ever doing this again."

"Wha's the Circle?" asked Greg curiously. "Are they the good guys? Can we be the good guys? I wan' t' be a good guy."

She had no clue how to respond to that; though Greg was a nice person and the two cousins had helped to push Roxy along the right path of where she needed to be looking next for answers, that didn't mean she knew them well enough to include them into her 'secret society'. After all, this was only the second time speaking to either of them, and the first time meeting Kaelyn was little more than a blurry memory. How would she be able to trust them, let alone convince everyone _else_ to trust them?

But Greg was looking at her so earnestly and Kaelyn had been so helpful and honest and she _believed_ Roxy. Deciding to throw caution to the wind a bit, she caved in and nodded, figuring she could deal with everyone else's opinion later.

"I don't see why not. Here," and Roxy grabbed her napkin, scribbling an address hurriedly as she spotted the waiter coming back, "this is where Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy live. Go visit them and ask if you can join the Circle. Oh, and tell them Roxy sent you." She winced internally, wondering why she was sticking her neck out for two people who were essentially strangers, to whom she owed nothing.

The way Gregory responded made her even less sure, from the way he broke out into a childish grin to how be began happily clapping his hands as the waiter arrived to clear away their dishes and hand Kaelyn the check. But one glance at Kaelyn's face confirmed that Roxy was doing the right thing. The older woman was in the same place, feeling like no one would believe her, and now, having finally found someone willing to listen to what she had to say, Kaelyn was glad to hopefully be joining a group of people who would finally take her seriously as well as help her bring justice to her brother's memory.

* * *

"What do you think?" Aniya asked Victoire as they headed out from the tea room. "If it worked with you guys the last time, don't you think it would be worth at least a shot in trying to help Lindsey? If she panics, I'll back off immediately, but the Healers have exhausted all their methods before Lindsey was even admitted. It couldn't hurt to at least try, wouldn't you say?"

"I dunno. It just sort of feels invasive, you know? And besides, what if it hurts her or make things even worse? I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if we caused Lindsey any more pain than we already have." Victoria twisted the strand of her necklace around her finger nervously and glanced to Schuyler on her other side. Though both girls had been in Ravenclaw during their time at Hogwarts, Schuyler was older by a year and far more vocal, so Victoire had become used to letting the other girl make decisions for the two of them.

"No offence, but what you do is kind of freaky. I mean, the rest of us may also have weird powers, sort of like you, but they never really manifested much nor were any of us ever trained to use our abilities as weapons, which leaves both Victoria and myself more than a little apprehensive about allowing you to experiment on Lindsey given her current state."

"My 'freaky abilities' are what saved you earlier this year!" Aniya insisted, scowling up at them and wishing Roxy were here. They would _have_ to listen to her then.

"Yes, and we're quite grateful for that fact, truthfully we are, but there is still the matter of the potential harm you may accidentally put Lindsey through that makes Victoria and I wary. We don't know the full power of what you can do and it's more than a little dangerous to be running experiments on an already damaged human mind. It's not that we don't trust you, only that we don't quite trust what you can do."

Aniya continued to give Schuyler a cross look. She couldn't understand why they wouldn't put any faith into her abilities considering all that she had already accomplished. Instead of encouraging her to try to help a friend in need, Aniya was being treated as though she was diseased and dangerous, as though by having her powers, she was somehow inhuman enough that they saw her in the same way that the Wizengamot saw her father when he was thrown into Azkaban. And it was made that much more ridiculous by the fact that Victoria and Schuyler, with a little help and training, would probably be able to do things just as 'freaky' and 'unnatural' as Aniya.

"So let me get this straight," Aniya said, stepping closer to the two girls and sticking her chest out. "Because you don't 'understand' what I can do, you're going to reject a possible method to save your friend without even a second thought despite the fact that I've already proven that I can control myself and have been able to help people—namely yourselves—in the past." Despite being undersized, she gave them her most intimidating glare and was glad to see the panic in their eyes. "You would rather let Lindsey suffer forever without even trying just because you feel a tad uneasy about a skill that I've been honing since I was old enough to ride a broom? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"  
Victoria and Schuyler glanced at each other nervously, wondering if they were really being bullied by a girl half their size. Though Aniya _did_ bring up some good points and they'd probably feel even worse off for not trying to help Lindsey at all rather than at least trying and failing. And who knew? Maybe Aniya would be able to do something to bring their friend back.

"Fine," Schuyler replied tersely, "but the second that I feel like things are going wrong, you'll back away and leave her alone, do you understand me? You will not hurt her, Lamb."

"Yes, I get it, you think I torture puppies for fun and have no soul." She pushed past them to the Janus Thickey Ward. "Now come along, ladies, I have plenty of work to do before a Healer walks in on us. Let's go try the only method left to us—me."

With that, Aniya walked off to begin what needed to be done. She silently made her way towards where Lindsey was being kept. She pushed the door open and stepped inside, looking around for the addled blonde, sensing that Victoria and Schuyler were following after her.

A man with thinning grey-brown hair who seemed to be pushing seventy years old wandered past her, pausing long enough to give the three females a gap-toothed smile before he toddled off. Aniya looked after him tilting her head as she wondered if she had seen the ageing man somewhere before. Had he perhaps been mentioned in an article at some point?

But that didn't matter, Aniya reminded herself, since they weren't here to observe old men but rather to help Lindsey.

On the bed furthest from the door was the girl in question, a brush held in her shaking hands as she struggled to brush her hair. Victoria rushed over to help, placing her hands over Lindsey's to assist her in tugging the brush through her wavy locks in a slow, even motion. In response, Lindsey gave her friend an empty smile though she didn't seem to recognise the three girls around her.

"Are you sure you really want to do this?" Schuyler asked Aniya, giving the smaller, younger girl a sharp look. "She may be mentally unwell but at least she's happy in her own way."

"But she could be happy _and_ healthy if I at least get the chance to try. And besides, this isn't the real Lindsey, you and I both know that. We can't just leave her like this simply because she appears to be happy, given her current mental state, and if you really consider yourself to be her friend, you won't leave her this way if there's even the smallest chance of making things right again."

Schuyler gave Aniya a cross look but snapped, "I suppose you have a point. I'd rather have the true Lindsey back anyway. Seeing her like this just isn't right, it isn't her."

They conjured up chairs to sit across from the blonde, who smiled happily at them as well, her eyes empty. It was obvious she didn't recognise the two at all nor did she understand why there were suddenly a bunch of new people around her with strange expressions on their faces.

"Lindsey?" Victoria asked quietly, putting the hairbrush aside. "Lindsey, we're going to try to help you, okay? Aniya here," she patted the younger girl's knee then took Lindsey's hand and had her also pat Aniya's knee, "is going to try something new that we hope might make you better. It might hurt, though, so if it does, don't feel afraid to make some sort of noise or show us that you're in pain. We don't want you to suffer, so tell us however you can if it gets to be too much."

The blonde merely let out a small moan and bumped her head against Victoria's arm, her hair falling across her face.

"Alright, I'm going to put my hands on her shoulders," Aniya told the other two. "I don't know how long this will take—it could be five minutes or five hours. It's a matter of how hidden within herself Lindsey is and how willing she is to come back out. And if she doesn't want to at all, then there's nothing left for me to do. I have no real idea of what my ability allows me to do in this situation or how far it can reach. Are you guys okay with that?"

They glanced nervously at each other, unsure if they should really allow the daughter of a Death Eater touch their friend. But they also understood that if they didn't allow this modicum of trust, Lindsey would have no chance to recover. So, in one motion, they nodded, hoping that they were making the right decision.

Placing her hands on the twenty year old's shoulders, Aniya closed her eyes and bowed her head, mentally searching for the door that would allow her into Lindsey's mind. She quickly forgot the presence of Schuyler or Victoria, forgot all about the ward of mentally unstable patients who, like Lindsey, had been put in the sad room with no hope of recovering.

She found the door quickly and, taking a deep breath, threw it open to find herself staring into a wooden tree house where a little girl with golden blonde hair was sitting on the floor, playing muggle chess by herself, leaning across the board to move the white pieces before returning to her side and carrying on the game. In the corner, a little wireless radio was playing a generically senseless pop song that Aniya forgot the words to as soon as she heard them. A single beam of sunlight struggled its way through the dark cloth that covered the tree house's only opening, the poorly cut-out doorway.

Looking up from her game of chess, the girl smiled at Aniya, revealing a missing front tooth. "Are you here to play with me?" she asked, smoothing out the skirt of her yellow dress. "Mummy says I'm to stay here until she and Daddy get back from the hospital. Are you the sitter?"

"Uh, yeah, I am," mumbled Aniya, shutting the door behind her and causing it to disappear as she settled on the floor, bemused. "Why is your mum at the hospital? Is she sick, or is it your dad? Has something happened?"

"No, silly! Mummy says her stomach is so big because there's a baby inside of her. James McIntyre says that babies get inside of you because you accidentally ate a watermelon seed so now I don't eat watermelon any more because I don't want to have a baby like Mummy." The girl wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Granny says that Mummy is much too old to have a baby and it'll come out all wrong but Mummy and Daddy told me not to listen to her because she never has anything nice to say anyway."

"That sounds very wise," Aniya replied. "So your name is Lindsey, right?" The little girl nodded. "And how old are you, Lindsey?"

"Oh, I'm five years old!" Lindsey held up her right hand, showing all of her fingers to Roxy. "I was supposed to be six when the baby came, but she decided to be early. She's going to be my baby sister, like how Emma is Janey's little sister. I don't have any other sisters, though. Or brothers, which is good because boys are so gross and yucky! I wouldn't want a brother."

"Hm. I have two baby sisters, although they aren't really babies any more," said Aniya, smiling a the thought of her own siblings. "Aleah is..." Aniya froze, realising that her sister would never get the chance to celebrate her seventeenth birthday. "Well, she's sixteen right now. And my youngest sister is fourteen years old. I'm nineteen."

Lindsey's eyes went wide. "That's so old!" she exclaimed, making Aniya chuckle weakly, still thinking of her sister. "But Mummy is even older than that, she's almost forty years old. She's the oldest mummy ever."

Suddenly there was a man's voice from outside, telling Lindsey to come down and stop playing in the tree house.

"Sorry," she told Aniya, "that's my daddy." She scrambled away and the whole world changed, leaving Aniya dizzy. When her eyes focused once more, it was to see a slightly older Lindsey staring warily at her opened Hogwarts letter, a look of apprehension on her face like it might try to bite her face off or start singing limericks.

"Hello, Lindsey," said Aniya quietly, making the girl jump. "Is that your school letter? Are you excited to go to Hogwarts?"

"IS this a joke?" asked the eleven year old. "Magic isn't real, that's what everyone says—Mum, Dad, my teachers. Magic and witches are just the sort of thing that you read about in books but people can't really _do_ that sort of thing. This is a joke."

"No, it isn't. You're a witch, Lindsey, the same as me." Aniya pulled out her wand and made the radio lift into the air and settle back onto its spot. "See? Magic _is_ real. You belong at Hogwarts, trust me, they'll help you learn how to control your magic and you'll fly on brooms and make potions and do all sorts of magical things like that."

Instead of responding, Lindsey fled from the tree house and the scene once more turned blurry. This time, though, when she returned to the tree house, twenty year old, present day Lindsey was glaring at Aniya, the smashed remains of her radio scattered across the floor, the chess pieces tossed around and broken.

"I want you to go away, Aniya," she snapped, folding her arms over her chest. "I know why you're here, but the answer is no. I'm not going back to the real world, not when life is so much easier in here. Out there, the only thing waiting for me is the same old pain and death and feelings of inadequacy. In here, though, there is no war and I can be happy forever. So just leave because I'm not going with you."

"But Lindsey—"

"No!" she shrieked, kicking the pieces of the radio. "You know what's waiting for me? A grave where we buried my mother after she died of lung cancer when I was thirteen. My father, who's only diagnosed with dementia even though he's sixty-five and there's no cure for muggles. My fourteen year old sister that lives with our aunt and barely remembers I even exist. My boyfriend _killed_ himself because of everything that happened with the Faceless One—oh, yeah, I was dating Ethan, not that anyone ever bothered to ask—and now my brain is so scrambled that the only way to make sense of it all is to hide away here in my memories and pretend like I never met you or Roxy Weasley nor heard the name 'Trinh Itawa'. So go away, I'm not going with you no matter what you say."

Now she was looking at Lindsey as a teenager, the girl sitting cross-legged underneath the window, watching calmly as Aniya came out the door. Lindsey did not react immediately, choosing instead to slowly push herself up onto her feet, still maintaining strict eye contact the whole time.

"You've been here before," the girl said in a quiet voice, raising her eyebrows. "In my head, before today, you've been here. I'd been trying to remember when that was, but now it's come to me. You were here back in February, scrounging around in the hopes of bringing Lindsey back to reality once more, waking this body from a come because the Faceless One—Khiroxattianrewtoroaxkrangphru—attacked Lindsey and left her an empty shell of herself."

This wasn't how things were supposed to go. This version of Lindsey was still too young to have experienced any of the stuff she was referring to so how did she know it had happened? And why was she speaking so strangely? This wasn't right, it didn't make any sense, and that Aniya nervous. How could she help Lindsey if the other girl wasn't playing by the rules?

"Oh, who cares about the rules?" Lindsey asked, shaking her head. "I mean, you can see into my thoughts and experiences so you aren't exactly playing by the same rules as the rest of us, now are you? All I'm doing is taking advantage of the same cheat system you've been using your entire life. Get used to it."

"I don't understand, Lindsey. You're a good person, why are you acting like I'm your worst enemy? I thought we were friends."

"'Friends'? Aniya, you thought it yourself, I don't know you yet, so how could I be friends with someone I've never met? Besides, real friends wouldn't go digging around in each other's minds." She smirked. "I guess that means that you don't have any friends, then, since you can't seem to stay out of _anyone's_ head, not even Desmond or Roxy. Why is that, by the way? Why are you always sifting through everyone's thoughts and memories? Is it because you're afraid they all secretly hate you, is that it?"

"Shut up," snapped Aniya.

"Oh no, you don't like it when someone does it to you? Well, that's not very fair, now is it, Aniya? You really don't like playing by the rules, naughty girl."

"Shut up! What is wrong with you? Why are you being so mean? What did I ever do to you, Lindsey? This isn't like you! You're a nice person!"

"That's because there's no Lindsey left to be nice any more, obviously," she replied and when Aniya looked at her eyes, all she saw was the empty gaze of the Faceless One, who was once more in control of the young woman. "I've taken her over entirely, there's nothing _left_ of Lindsey for you to bother saving any more, thanks to her giving herself over to me. She's all mine, my little puppet, and we're going to have a lot of fun together. So that means it's time for you to leave now."

With that, she—he—it shoved Aniya back out the door and slammed it shut.


	68. A glimpse into the future

Staring into the mirror, Lily put a hand to her face, taking in the streaks of grey that ran through her otherwise vibrant red hair. Her brown eyes had faded from energetic to exhausted; lines now appeared at the corner of her mouth and between her eyebrows whenever she smiled or frowned. Lily thought she looked a bit like her mum did, maturing gracefully enough but still ageing more rapidly than hoped for.

She blinked and was once more twenty-one, bright hair and sparkling eyes. Another blink and she went back to being middle-aged. Lily's gaze fell on a small scar on her right cheek. It was only a centimetre and a half at most didn't seem very deep.

Lily lifted her head, stroking the scar in bewilderment, wondering where it had come from. The blemish was old, she could tell, and had faded with time. But lily didn't know how old she was supposed to be at this point in time. The scar could be something she acquired later that day or ten years from now, there was no real way to tell. But she didn't like the sight of it on her otherwise flawless (if ageing) face.

After she tired of staring at herself in the mirror, Lily stood up and walked from her room in search of Thomas, whom she hoped had aged as well as she had. The nicely decorated living room was still there, with the muggle television neatly in the same spot as the last time. But this time, the silly toys were gone, replaced with a stand to hold several brooms as well as a bookshelf pushed up against the far wall. Pictures hung in the entryway and Lily stared in amazement at what seemed to be the most recent.

There was a teenage boy who looked a bit like her father, with the same wild dark hair, though he had Lily's brown eyes and cheek smile. A much younger boy with blond hair and brown eyes stood to the right while a little girl with blue eyes and red hair was to the left. Behind them was Ruby, a fully matured adult, with that same red hair, brown eyes, and annoyed expression. She was around the same age as the Ruby that Lily had seen in the rubble of Diagon Alley.

"Are we becoming sentimental already then, dear?" asked Thomas, who smiled at Lily, raising his eyebrows when she turned cautiously to face him. His hair had turned an ashy blond and he had a wrinkled forehead but he was still quite attractive. "Nicky is almost ready but Kat has decided that she doesn't want to go again and Theo's locked himself in his room. According to him, he shouldn't _have_ to go since he's got OWLS as soon as he goes back to school."

Lily nodded, doing her best to act as though she had nay idea what Thomas was talking about. She remembered Theodore as being her son and presumed that Nicky and Kat were younger children. "I'll try to talk Kat back into getting ready if you get Theo," she replied, giving Thomas a weak grin and hoped he didn't notice that there was something off about her.

Stepping past him, Lily headed through the living room and past her bedroom once more, glancing at the staircase and wondering if that was where 'Kat' was. Deciding she had no choice but to look, she headed upstairs and was, thankfully, swiftly rewarded by a door with sparkly purple block letters spelling out _Katrina_ on one of the doors. Lily knocked softly just above the name.

"Hey, Kat? It's me, Mum. How close are you to finishing up because we don't have too much longer before it's time to go and you know how rude it is to show up late to important events."

"I don't _want_ to go!" cried a girl's voice, sounding shaky and wobbling as though she'd been crying. "I hate wearing dress robes and it's gonna be all sad! Granny won't look like Granny any more, she'll look like a skeleton, that's what Charlie said and I don't like skeletons, Mummy. They're scary! I don't want to go—I _won't_ go!"

Lily pulled away from the door in horror, wondering how old she was that her mother had died. Or perhaps 'Granny' referred to Lily's grandmother, Molly Weasley, which was an equally frightening thought that made her eyes grow wide at the very notion of it.

"Oh, sweetie," she said in what Lily hoped was a convincingly assuring tone. "Don't listen to Charlie, you know how he is. Boys are like that, always trying to scare you." She winced, hoping Charlie was indeed a male. "Granny won't be a skeleton, she'll only look like she's sleeping, that's all. No bones, no skeletons."

There was a sniffle. "Do you promise she won't be a skeleton?" asked the little girl, voice still trembling with emotion.

"Of course I promise. Don't you trust your mum? Besides, you and I both know that skeletons aren't real. Charlie was only trying to rile you up to make himself feel better, which obviously wasn't a nice thing to do and I'll talk to him about it later on if you want me to."

Several seconds of silence passed and then the door opened to reveal a teary-eyed little girl of about seven or eight years old. She had on entirely black robes that were a tad too long at the hem and sleeve, making her look like she was drowning in fabric. Except for the blue eyes, she was nearly identical to how Lily had looked at that age.

"Will I have to look at her as we walk by? Charlie said you're supposed to do that at funerals, look at the dead body and say nice things about them. And who are we supposed to say 'I'm sorry' to like we did when Great-Uncle Bill died? I know we said it to Great-Aunt Fleur but Granny doesn't have a Great-Aunt Fleur to say it to because you said Grandpa Weasley died before I was born."

Okay, so now Lily at least knew it was her grandmother and not her mother who had passed away—though that didn't make things better, especially since she had just discovered that her favourite uncle, Bill, had already died in this timeline.

"No dear," she said consolingly, wondering who else had died between her own present and this one. "You won't have to look inside the casket if you don't want to. And as far as who we'll give our condolences, I suspect that, uh, Uncle Percy will be in charge of that since he's the eldest now." Lily sincerely hoped that, as pompous as he was, that Uncle Percy was still around for at least the fact that she couldn't handle the shock of having lost any more family members.

"Okay," replied Katrina, finally relieved enough to continue getting ready. "But I want to sit with Raegan and Cousin Roxy. If I sit with you, Charlie will be mean to me again and try to tell me scary things like that Granny is going to crawl out of her coffin and attack us or that if I stare at her for too long, she'll kill me in my sleep tonight." The girl crossed her arms. "I don't like Charlie very much, he's not nice."

Lily frowned, curious as to which of her relatives had spawned such a sadistic little monster as Charlie. "Are these all things that he's told you, dear?" Kat nodded warily. "Hm, I'll definitely have a chat with him, then. I don't appreciate that he says that kind of stuff in order to scare my little girl with such nonsense."

Katrina sniffed, grateful. "Do you think Granny is happy again now that she has Grandpa Weasley to talk to? Or do you think she misses us as much as we miss her?" Suddenly Katrina threw her arms around Lily's waist, crying out, "Please don't ever die, Mummy, I would be so sad if you died, like how Cousin Roxy is sad all the time now that Markus is gone or like Uncle Albus because of Aunt Jenna. If you died, we've have to put you in dress robes and everyone would tell Daddy how sad they are and Alia would probably not be very nice—she might say that she won't come at all because she likes to be mean like that even though she's my big sister and Daddy says I'm to love her no matter what kind of mean, nasty things she says to me. But I don't want that to happen, so you can't ever die, okay, Mummy?"

There was no real way to respond to that since, for all Lily knew, this could be a timeline that would never happen to her, but she couldn't say such a thing to a little girl like that, so instead he nodded. "You and I will live forever, don't you worry, Kat. We'll become immortal."

"What about Daddy? What about Ruby or Theo or Nicky?" Katrina looked up at her with big, doe-like eyes and an adorably innocent expression. "Will they get to live forever, too? Can they be immortal just like us?" She glanced away, a troubled gleam in her eyes that made her appear older than her seven years. "Granny wasn't immortal, though. Why wasn't she immortal? I wish everyone could be so that no one will ever have to die again."

"Hey, how are things coming along here?" asked Thomas, coming up to the top of the staircase and leaning his elbow on the bannister as he looked from his wife to his daughter. "Nicky's waiting downstairs and I've got Theo bribed and ready to go. Told the brat that I'd get Falmouth season tickets if he acted mature for your sake." Thomas shook his head. "I don't recall having ever been so blasé about death at fifteen like he is."

Lily shrugged. "All teenagers are brats these days." She couldn't help but think of herself at fifteen years old and how awful she'd been. "Besides, if anything, he gets that from his uncle. James could sulk and pitch a fit and act like he didn't care as though it were his job to act like a child. Or there was Roxy when she lost her brother and then her father—she acted as though their deaths meant less than nothing to her. Let him mature a tad more and he'll admit he's just as choked up as we are, trust me."

He moved to kiss her on the forehead. "Your grandmother was a great woman, after all, everyone who ever met her knew that." Thomas glanced at Katrina. "Come on, little Kat, let's go downstairs so we can pay our respects to the greatest great-grandmother to ever exist, yeah? And remember that it's okay to cry. Merlin knows I'll be crying."

* * *

And as suddenly as taking a breath, Lily was back in the destroyed rubble of Diagon Alley, though it was day time for once. She glanced around, taking in the destroyed and collapsed buildings, the parts of the street not more than a few metres away that were simply _gone_ , blasted apart to leave a gaping hole far wider than a giant's footstep; a portal to hell, that was her first thought. It would suck her in and she'd wake up in hell.

"Not very pretty is it, Mum?" asked Ruby, jumping down from a pile of rubble, her mouth curling into a smirk. "All of this that you helped to start? It's not much to look at. Good thing Cousin Roxy moved out before the place fell to shite, don't you think? Oh, but wait, she's partially responsible for all of this too, except that the two of you would never dare own up to it."

"What happened here? What did we do to destroy Diagon Alley like this? And—and when does all of this take place? I mean, will it really happen in my timeline or can I do something to stop it? _Is_ there anything that can be done to stop it?"

Ruby shook her head, disgusted by the whinging tone to her mother's voice. "Twenty-seventh of September, 2029. Trinh Itawa, under the order of her mother and the daemon known as Khiro or the Faceless One, attacks Diagon Alley along with an army of nearly two hundred others. Led by Roxy Weasley and Albus Potter, a resistance crushes Itawa, but not without incurring several thousand galleons in damage and causing a loss in life equal to that of the Battle of Hogwarts. Though Itawa is arrested for her crimes, the mother and the daemon go unpunished, allowing them to continue their schemes to take over the world. Because of this, they choose to attack once more, with larger forces in the spring of 2056. Even more people die this time and Diagon Alley is so destroyed that even now, three years later, the Ministry is struggling to slowly build it back piece by piece. There's simply not enough money to repair the town and people claim that it is cursed to be destroyed any time that we attempt to restore it, so not enough manpower is available either. And none of this would have happened if you simply did your job and appropriately punished Phuong Itawa when your best chance was available."

"But—" Lily scoffed, shaking her head. "All of this is nearly thirty years away, can't we do something between my time and yours to make things right? Or, even beyond that, how is it exactly _my_ fault that Phuong wasn't persecuted and snaps again? The trial has already passed for me, I can't do anything to fix that now."

Ruby sighed, jumping off of the rubble and started walking away, waving her hand for Lily to follow after her.

It didn't make sense; did Ruby intend to hold it against her for the rest of her life that Lily had given her up for adoption? By the looks of it, and if Ruby was telling the truth, then her daughter was currently pushing thirty. When would she finally get over everything and finally accept that lily had made the best decision?

"I'm getting married this May," Ruby said quietly, twisting her head to look at Lily. "His name is Logan Higgs. Legally, he's my second cousin on Dad's side. Biologically, we aren't related and didn't even know we shared a connection of any kind until about four years ago."

"Do you love him?" Lily asked; her daughter nodded, the corners of her mouth turning up into a genuine smile. "Well, that's good. You should only ever marry someone if you love them. I hope you know what I'm trying to say when I tell you that, yes, Ruby?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not an idiot and I'm not an emotional teenager any more. I realise that you and Dad don't love each other, nor did you ever love each other. You both remarried, had kids with the people you _did_ love and left me in a broken home to live a lie." Ruby glanced away, kicking at a piece of fallen concrete. "Not that I care much any more—Logan helped me get over it, after a time of working through the anger at feeling unwanted."

"And yet you seem to still hate me, for someone who has supposedly moved on from my perceived crime against you."

"No, I merely hate you because you're over fifty years old and still incredibly immature about our relationship. Deny it all you like—Merlin knows that the present day Lily certainly does—but I know you love Katrina more than you do me since she's _Thomas'_ daughter and I'm not. Sometimes I suspect that you love Alia more than me, as ridiculous as that is."

Lily frowned, wondering who in the world Alia was. Presumably, by Ruby's antagonism against her, she wasn't the daughter of Tolkien and his new wife. But she said nothing, knowing that arguing would lead them nowhere.

"But like you said, all of these problems are nearly thirty years away for you so it's not like you really need to care, isn't that right? You won't have to face the consequences of what you've done for another, oh, eleven or so years in your timeline? Not that I think you could ever care about me and it's become easier to pretend that I don't care either."

"That same sob story is beginning to grow old," Lily told her daughter scathingly. "I don't care how many times you try to tell me I've somehow entirely ruined your life by giving you to Lucy, nothing is going to convince me that your childhood was screwed up enough to justify your undying hatred of me. I _know_ Lucy and she would never do anything bad to you so stop trying to pretend like being adopted means you grew up damaged."

The other woman was silent, hopping from one pile of rubble to another, an intense look on her face. When she spoke, it was in a clipped, angry tone. "Mum—Lucy, that is—married a guy named Philip when I was about three. I don't really remember life before he came around and always thought he was my dad, but Phil became quick to inform me that he most certainly was _not_ my father. He never hurt me or Mum or my sisters, his _real_ daughters, but I don't think he ever loved us either. It was like there was this barrier and all of his affection was pushed behind it, tucked away so deep that you'd never be able to find it. Mum would go to kiss him but he'd push her away and tell her that he was busy. The first time Mum caught him was when his girlfriend showed up at the house asking for money; she was eight months pregnant. Mum and Phil had a big row and he swore he'd break up with his girlfriend. When she found that he was still seeing the woman and that she was pregnant once more, Mum threw him out and divorced him. I was eleven, bound for Hogwarts in a few months' time, and suddenly Mum was having a bloody meltdown and it was up to me to make sure that my sisters were okay. I was a _child_ but I'd been pushed into the role of an adult without any warning."

"And this is all my fault somehow? I made him cheat on Lucy, I made her go round the bend with grief? Or, no, don't tell me, somehow _I'm_ the other woman, is that it?"

"No, nothing that sadistic," replied Ruby. "I know you love Thomas more than anything and that you'd never cheat on him as ironic as that is. But while Mum was losing her mind, she begged you to confess, to finally tell the truth and help ease the burden of such a huge secret. Your response was to laugh in her face and tell her that she deserved everything that had happened because you had _warned_ her about Phil and it was, therefore, her own damn fault that she was in this mess in the first place. Then you walked off and tried to pretend that you weren't guilty of ruining our lives."

"You're lying! You're just saying that shite to make me look worse so you'll feel better about a twenty year old grudge that you'll never let die because you seem to think it's the only thing you have. If you'd just get past all of this, life would become better, easier."

She nodded. "You're right, it _is_ the only thing I have, of you at least. For the first eleven years of my life, you allowed me to think you were just one more relative in a sea of Weasleys. Once I found out, you could have accepted it and accepted me but instead, you tried to play the whole thing off like none of this was your problem to deal with. It took Granny, Mum, and Thomas to get you to even invite me over to your house. You refused to call me your daughter until I was nearly seventeen and even then, I knew it wasn't because you loved me. You've always looked at me and only seen Tolkien Smith's daughter. Just like Phil, you made it very clear that I was no child of yours, even if the tests said otherwise."

With that, she flipped Lily off and sprinted away, running until she was far out of sight and Lily couldn't have chased after her even if she felt like doing so.

* * *

"Here you go," said Roxy, who had bags under her eyes and an exhausted look on her whole face. She had aged at least fifteen years since the last time that Lily had seen her. "What do you think? He'll be quite the looker some day, don't you agree? He's got Markus' eyes."

Resting in Lily's arms was a newborn baby, a boy with light brown skin and bright blue eyes, his head already covered in a thin layer of black hair. He made a cooing noise and waved his fist in the air, nearly brushing Lily's nose in the process.

"Oh...how cute...he looks just like you, Rox. What did you decide to name him?" Lily asked awkwardly, glancing down tentatively at the infant.

Roxy furrowed her brow, giving her cousin a bewildered look. "Don't tell me I've lost my mind _that_ much due to pregnancy brain? I thought I told you that we decided to name him Matthew Frederick. Oh, don't act surprised like that, I know I told you that Mark and I went over this ahead of time and not only did he suggest the name, he encouraged me to honour my brother this way. Though, obviously, we decided to make _Frederick_ his middle name instead, just in case."

Lily glanced down at the baby once more, wondering who Markus was. She assumed that it was Roxy's husband, which would make the most sense, but she couldn't think of anyone by the name of Markus, so she wondered if the guy would be someone her cousin would meet in the near future. Or maybe now that Lily knew about him, it would be her job to set the two up.

"So, uh, where is Markus right now anyway? Shouldn't he be here with you and the baby?" Lily looked around at the waiting room outside of the maternity ward at St Mungo's, remembering how just a few months ago, in her timeline at least, her entire family had been in this same room, waiting for Lily to finish giving birth.

"Lils, are you feeling alright? You know that Markus is away on work right now, the same place he's been for three weeks now. That's why I owled you to take me here. Don't tell me you've been zoned out the whole day? I left you in charge of my daughter. Speaking of which," Roxy glanced around, frowning, "where _is_ she?"

"Er..."

"Did you let my daughter just walk off by herself?" Roxy shrieked, jumping to her feet in horror. "Lils, she's only two, you have to pay attention to young children all the time! How can you not keep that simple fact straight when you have three kids of your own? What if someone walked off with her?"

Just then, Albus walked into the waiting room, holding a little girl in his arms; she had a mass of curly brown hair and her brown eyes lit up with joy at the sight of Roxy. She squirmed in Albus' grip, twisting wildly until he sighed and set her on the floor, letting the toddler scramble childishly over to her mother, holding up her arms to be picked up.

"Hey, baby," said Roxy, kissing her daughter on the cheek. She had calmed down considerably now that she'd found the little girl. "Your cousin Lily has no idea what she's doing, I don't know _why_ I thought it would be a good idea to leave you with her in the first place."

"Oh don't get too mad at her, Rox, I've been here the whole time so I figured it was best to let Lily fall asleep while the little monster and I took a short walk around the floor to calm down. After all, between my two youngest, I've gotten used to nothing but crying and a complete lack of sleep." He pointed in the direction of two little boys playing with stuffed bears, the younger of which was only able to stay sitting up because he was clipped into a plastic seat; the older boy was probably around the same age as Roxy's daughter.

Lily stared in shock at her nephews. They both had the same dark black hair as Albus, his pale skin, and the elder one even had Al and Dad's green eyes. There was no denying that they were his biologically, considering their narrow, pointed nose and high cheekbones, but Lily couldn't imagine how Albus and Scorpius had children together—and did he say two _youngest_? So that meant they must have other children.

Albus scooped the younger boy up in his arms and turned to see Matthew in Lily's arms. "So that's Matthew?" he asked, then moved over to hold his son up to face the newborn child. "See, Corin, this is your cousin Matthew. You two are gonna go to Hogwarts together so it'll be your job to help each other out with homework and mean students because family _always_ looks out for each other no matter what."

Corin's response was to yawn and stare down at the floor disinterestedly, unwilling to be coaxed into paying any attention to the newborn.

The older of the two boys also padded over at that moment, climbing a chair to stare down at Matthew with as much interest as his brother had boredom. He reached out to stroke the baby on the face, making him fuss briefly and push against the foreign skin that was unwelcome in touching him with no warning.

"Troye, let's not bother the baby, alright?" Albus said kindly, before turning to Roxy, apologetically explaining, "He's gotten really into babies as of late, for reasons that we don't really understand. He's always asking to hold Corin even if the boy doesn't want to be touched and other times, he'll ask to play doll house with Paisley." Albus shrugged. "Not that we're exactly going to stop him from playing how he wants to play as long as he isn't being violent about it."

So now Lily knew that she had at least two nephews and a niece, all of whom were apparently burdened with the same sorts of terrible names that the older three Potter children had always complained that their father gave them.

"How _is_ Paisley?" Lily asked in her most casual voice, trying to make it seem like she knew all about her niece rather than being a pseudo time traveller who was simply playing along as though everything was normal. "Where is she, actually? I would have thought she'd want to be here with her dad."

Albus and Roxy shared a look; clearly Lily had no been as casual as she'd hoped. "Well," Albus told her, a slight frown pulling at the corners of his lips, "Paisley is, like most five year olds, at primary school; I suspect that Scorpius will have to pick up her, Iain, Teagan, and Elliot since I'll be stopping by to visit Jenna for a little bit before we head home. She's not been feeling well since Corin was born and I'm really growing worried."

They had _six_ kids? Lily had to restrain herself from opening her mouth in utter confusion. But then it kicked in—Jenna Brownnut-Cotsky, who had been Albus' weird girlfriend that everyone had thought was a very bad cover for how gay he was before Albus eventually came out as something along the lines of bisexual, though he always called it "more complicated than that". It was possible, or rather probable, that Jenna had carried Albus and Scorpius' children for them.

"Yeah, I suppose that makes sense," Lily replied awkwardly then, as Roxy's daughter squirmed from her mum's arms to sit with Troye, handed off the newborn to her younger cousin. "Well, I have kids at home, too, so I should really head home and make sure that they haven't blown up the house while I'm gone."

She started to walk off and had just gotten out of the room and a few metres down the hallway when she heard someone behind her. Lily turned around to see her brother following after her, a baffled and somewhat worried look on his face as he reached out to grab Lily by the wrist.

"So what version of my sister are you?" he asked, narrowing hi eyes at Lily. Clearly, she had not convinced them at all that she belonged in this time period. At her shocked expression, he nodded. "Come on, Lils, we already know about the whole ability that you have to see into the future and accidentally jump into older versions of yourself so when you start acting so weird and seemingly don't know some fairly basic information, it's pretty obvious that you aren't the Lily of our time. I mean, I don't have _that_ many kids, you should be able to keep track of them all."

"How many kids _do_ you have, then? I mean, just out of curiosity. It's not like you haven't already told me enough about the future that it could hurt to tell me something so simple."

Her brother laughed and shrugged. "I suppose you have a point there, Lils. Scor and I, via the lovely Jenna, have seven children together, three girls and four boys with twelve years between them." He chuckled again at her wide eyes and gaping mouth. "Yeah, quite a handful, aren't they? But we both wanted large families and I'd never consider living any other sort of life. I love my husband, I love my kids, and I'm happy. We're all pretty happy, for the most part."

He threw Lily a pointed look that she chose to just as pointedly ignore, not wanting to talk any more about her forgotten daughter.

"So life is better now?" she asked curiously. "It seems like life has certainly improved. I'm coming from the mindset of the end of 2029, where we're still trying to get over the whole Itawa nonsense and the battle at Diagon Alley."

She watched the way his face changed, his eyes growing wide and face paling more than usual. "Er, yeah, everything is definitely better , especially now that..." Albus paused and shook his head. "No, it's best if I simply don't tell you about that, considering that it falls under the category of things that would definitely change the future, especially in your personal near future."

"Okay?" Lily had no idea what he was referring to. What else was going to happen that was so important that he couldn't tell her? "But I really should be going, to be totally honest. From my perspective, all of this is a dream and I can feel myself waking up as we speak."

Albus nodded understandingly and hugged her good-bye before he walked away, leaving her to shake her head in confusion while St Mungo's blurred in and out of focus for a few brief seconds before going dark altogether.

* * *

"Lils, are you awake?" asked Roxy, her voice floating just above her head. When Lily opened her eyes, she did not initially put together the fact that the face before her was that of Roxy from the present day, with big brown eyes and hair hanging in limp curls around her head. "Oh, good, you're awake finally. You've been making strange noises in your sleep, you weirdo."

Lily sat up, pushing Roxy off of her. "How'd you even get in here, Rox? Do Mum and Dad know that you're here or did you use your Slytherin powers to sneak past the wards and get inside?"

"Don't be silly. Aunt Ginny let me in when I knocked on the door like a totally normal person." Roxy squinted at her contemplatively. "You're all pale and sweaty—were you seeing the future in your dreams? That's how it all works, right? I dunno, I know it makes you feel off but you have to admit the idea behind it is cool and very helpful." Her voice took on a sarcastic edge. "Just imagine it, you could see how something happens and then _actually_ tell us before so that we know how to avoid it happening, instead of losing our friends' lives. You should definitely look out for things that might kill our friends in the future and warn us, you know?"

She wondered if it would be smart to tell Roxy about what she had seen when talking to Ruby or keep that to herself considering how far off into the future that was. There was also the problem that, by knowing a possible future and trying to avoid it, they could instead inadvertently bring it about anyway and ruin everything.

So Lily didn't tell Roxy what she'd seen, from the destroyed Diagon Alley to Roxy's future children to Grandmum's death in just under three decades from now.

"I don't really remember seeing anything of note," Lily lied, shrugging at her cousin's disappointed look. "Besides, even I did have dreams like that, how would we be able to always distinguish between visions of the future and simple nightmares? Remember I kept seeing my boyfriend die in a battle that he never participated in. I didn't see anything while asleep to begin with, but if I had and it didn't seem very important, how would I know to tell you about it?"

The younger girl jumped off the bed and began pacing the floor of Lily's room, an intense expression on her face as she pondered the question at hand. "Well, I didn't take Divination at Hogwarts because, until you started _seeing_ things, I didn't much faith into the concept, but I do remember that my dorm-mate Gwen took the class for several years and they were required to maintain dream journals to be able to interpret their dreams later in class. Perhaps you could do the same and write down anything that comes to mind while you're sleeping and you can show me so that we'll determine together whether or not it's important to our well-being."

"Hm." Lily made a face, not sure that she really wanted to recall and record ever dream she had from now on. "So why are you here so early in the morning anyway? Shouldn't you be getting ready for work, or better yet, sleeping?"

Roxy shook her head and stopped pacing, turning to scrutinise Lily with that same intense look. "I've been thinking a lot lately about how easily we got away with everything—defeating the Itawas, getting Trinh imprisoned, Phuong dropping the charges against Uncle Harry."

"Okay? What about it? They realised that it was best to back off for now and figure out where to go from here. Isn't that a good thing?"

"But _why_?" Roxy flung her hands into the air, groaning in frustration. "I mean, Phuong Itawa is a coldly intelligent, calculating person who considers every move that she makes so the question still remains of what benefit is served by turning tail and giving up her oldest child to her enemies? It just doesn't make sense to me, I can't find a plausible reason for why she's made the decisions that she had. And yeah, the Faceless One is a psychopath who wreaks havoc for his own strange, twisted reasons but even he has shown himself to be meticulous in how he does stuff, with every new bout of madness having an eerie amount of sense behind it."

"Rox." Lily swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet touching the floor even as she was pushing herself up into a standing position. She reached out and patted her cousin on the arm. "You look tired and drained. When's the last time you had a good night's sleep? Diagon Alley was a month and a half ago—Trinh has been in Azkaban for nearly a month. Don't you think you deserve to take a break and pretend like none of those problems exist, if only for a little while?"

"Ah, you're just like everyone else, you won't listen to a thing I say even though I'm trying to warn you that we're in danger!" She slammed her fist on Lily's dresser and kicked at the floor, an angry, frustrated burning in her eyes as her hands balled into fists. She resumed pacing back and forth, making a growling noise deep in her throat. "Lily, don't you see the truth? Don't you realise that if we back of and assume that nothing is going to happen, then we allow Itawa to be able to prepare her next attack uninhibited? I mean, we're basically handing it over to her—the whole battle, the entire war, we're letting her succeed without having to lift a finger."

There was a clattering downstairs as if someone had dropped a plate as suddenly and, as Roxy had blown up with emotion, her chest sagged and she collapsed into a sitting position on Lily's floor, letting out a heavy sigh and shaking her head despondently.

"What does it matter anyway? No one listens to me, no one believes what I have to say, what am I even trying for now?"

Lily walked over, leaning down to place her hands on Roxy's shoulders. "Please, Rox, you're beginning to scare me. We've won for now and it's unlikely that they'll try to attack again for a long time. With some of their most powerful people either killed or imprisoned, Itawa will need to take some time to recover and rebuild her forces. Please, just try to relax and take a breather. We don't know what she's going to do or when she'll try to strike once more so there's no point in stressing out about everything when we have no evidence that anything is wrong."

Instead, Roxy got back to her feet, letting out another heavy sigh as she looked Lily in the eye, a wild mannerism coursing through the smaller girl and making her twitch slightly. "I don't know why I'm bothering to fight it any more. I can't convince anyone—not you, Albus, Aniya. I'm better off trying to solve this myself."

With that, she pushed past Lily and out of the room, stomping down the stairs and leaving the redhead to stare after her in bewildered confusion, unsure why Roxy had become so irrationally paranoid as of late.

Would it have been smarter of her to relieve some of Roxy's tension by telling the other girl what Ruby had said about the next attack still being thirty years away or would that only make her that much more obsessive about preventing any of it from happening in the first place?

She didn't know what the right way of going about this was but she did know that chasing after Roxy when she was as pent up and frustrated as she was now would not make the situation better. Instead, it would be smarter for Lily to owl Aniya and Jo, asking them to continue keeping an eye on Roxy and prevent her from lashing out at anyone at her own expense. There was no way of telling where Roxy's newest fervent obsession had stemmed from but they would need to keep her safe from it.

Lily made a face before heading into the bathroom to shower and get dressed for the day. For now, she wanted to put all of this out of her head and deal with her cousin's psychosis after she'd at least had some breakfast. She could owl Aniya and Jo afterwards.

But for sure, she didn't want to think about that annoying argument that she'd had with her daughter thirty years in the future. She was so tired of being blamed for a choice that she'd made that, if Ruby were being honest with herself, was beneficial to the both of them. If everyone thought that Lily was a brat, her daughter was apparently going to turn out to be even worse.


	69. Roxy loses her mind

_**Chapter delayed due to revisions (and also being a full-time college student)**_

* * *

She angrily waved good-bye to her aunt, who was trying to pick up the several pans she'd dropped while struggling to make that morning's breakfast. Aunt Ginny waved to her in confusion, unsure why Roxy had barged in so suddenly only to leave after just a few minutes.

Roxy turned on the spot as soon as she got out of the boundaries of the Potter home, a scowl on her face, then popped back into existence on the streets of Diagon Alley, looking around with a feeling of disgruntlement. Rage was still coursing through her, though she struggled to maintain an air of calmness or face the potential of screaming her head off in a public area full of people.

It wasn't fair for all of this to happen, for everyone to reject the idea that they were all possibly in danger. They acted like she was just obsessing, that her fears had no basis whatsoever, but all that their ignorance showed was how powerful Itawa truly was, that she could make her enemies turn away not in fear or anguish but in mere boredom and the assumption that a few months of quiet meant life was back to normal.

But they didn't get it, they didn't understand why she was panicking, because they had allowed themselves to relax while only Roxy stood as a defence, knowing that the worst was still yet to come no matter what anyone else said.

And she would show them, Roxy swore to herself, stuffing her hands into her robes and stomping down the street. She would make sure that everyone understood the true consequences of letting down their guard when such a dangerous enemy still loomed so heavily over their heads. They might call her obsessive and paranoid, but she would prove that their war was not yet over.

As Roxy walked past a dark alleyway, contemplating her plan, she was grabbed by the hem of her robe. Immediately, her wand was out of her pocket and she spun around to glare at James Potter, whose ghostly form was peeking out at her from the shadows, giving Roxy reason to pause in both confusion and an increasing level of anger.

"Where the hell have you been for the past several months?" she snapped at the ghost. "People died! Why haven't you been helping out or doing anything at all to stop this crap from happening? Or do you not care that your only son might have been tossed into Azkaban just for trying to rescue poor, tortured children?"

Instead of responding, he put a finger to his lips and beckoned for Roxy to follow after him before slipping further into the shadows. Seeing no other option if she wanted answers, Roxy followed after him, doing her best to dodge puddles and piles of waste that had grown in the dark with no one to clean the place up or take care of it.

James Potter moved swiftly and deftly, only pausing long enough to make sure that Roxy was still following before he moved that much faster, always several steps ahead. The alleyway was much longer than she'd anticipated, seemingly having no end as they reached neither a solid wall nor the exit to a side street of some time despite walking for almost three minutes at this point.

Then, with no warning, the ghost stopped and turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows. "What I'm about to show you, only a few living mortals have seen. We aren't supposed to really show this place to those who still draw breath, but I fear that our options are quickly running out and I must admit that I've grown desperate enough to try anything, rules be damned."

"I don't understand." Roxy furrowed her brow; when she looked behind the ghost, there was only more endlessly stretching alleyway. "What's so important that you could only show me here? This place is creepy, not to mention that nothing good has ever happened in an alley."

He frowned at her. "You've become troubled lately due to all that's happened, I can see it in your head. Perhaps I shouldn't show you just yet—there's no telling the effect that it could have." He turned away, running his hands through his hair as he weighed his options. "But if I do not tell you, then how will you ever be able to find the answers that you and the others so desperately need? I could hold off until the information is truly vital—you're leaving soon enough anyway—but you're also my best hope. The others have fallen by the wayside, believing themselves to be safe merely because the threat does not feel immediate." James clapped his hands, coming to a decision. "No, I shall show you now. It's best that you know."

Baffled, the only response that Roxy could drum up was, "But...what are you talking about? What are you showing me? What do you mean I'm 'leaving' soon? What is the point of any of this if you're only going to show up every few months with cryptic clues rather than help?"

"Follow after me, Roxanne Weasley," he replied, then reached just above his head to seemingly scratch at something in the air. Pulling it downwards revealed a bright light that momentarily blinded her, forcing Roxy to close her eyes.

When she opened them once more, Roxy found herself staring in shock at the sight of the beach near Shell Cottage. She could hear the waves and smell the salt, all of it taking her back to her memories as a small child before everyone left her to go to Hogwarts. This beach, as well as her uncle's house, was the location of the very last summer she spent with Freddie, before he became really obsessed with girls, Quidditch, and pranking. It had been such a huge part of her childhood that she almost didn't realise—

"This isn't like last time, there's nobody else there so I can't be looking at a memory. I was never allowed to go down to the beach by myself as a child because my parents were afraid I would drown. What did you do, create a portal to my uncle's house? And what did you mean by living people haven't been here before? My whole family as been to Shell Cottage multiple times."

He glanced at her, smiling gently. "Is that what you see, then? A nice day at the beach? Mortals do often pick places of great importance or comfort to them. My son, for example, saw Platform 9 ¾ during his visit. The great witch Amelia Earhart saw her cockpit land back home to a great crowd applauding her success." At Roxy's stare, James Potter chuckled. "It's what you might call purgatory, my dear. Neither life nor death, not beginning but not yet the end."

"Purgatory?" she repeated, feeling far out of her depth. "You mean that place in all the muggle storybooks, the weird idea of existing between heaven and hell?"

"Well, not exactly, considering that heaven and hell are mere concepts and so is the thought of purgatory. That's why it doesn't look the same for everyone, nor does the afterlife. Some see it as an idyllic paradise and choose to call it heaven while others are chased by their worst nightmares and see it as hell. But purgatory is neither of those things, but is rather a place to wait while forces greater than you or I determine whether or not it is your time to 'move on' and if so, what you shall move onto. It is a place to collect yourself and prepare for the next stage of existence."

"But I'm not dead, am I? How can I visit purgatory if I haven't died? And what if these 'forces' decide to judge me anyway and send me on to the afterlife before I'm ready?"

"Ah, yes, that tricky bit. Well, I am hoping that they'll acknowledge your current state of being not yet dead and choose to respect it, letting you go back to the world of the living once we're done. Otherwise, I will do my bet to argue for your continued existence." He gave her no chance to respond before he grabbed Roxy by the wrists and jumped into purgatory.

The year separating them from the real world disappeared, leaving Roxy trapped with James Potter in a land meant for dead people. So she responded the only way that made sense—screaming.

Roxy beat her fist against the air, which was strangely solid, the wall of the real world still existing even though she couldn't see it. But after a few seconds even the wall faded from existence, sending Roxy tumbling forward into the sand when she lifted her hand to hit the invisible brick and found nothing. She spluttered, landing face first in the sand.

"Are you done freaking out yet?" asked James Potter, raising his eyebrows at her. "This little bit of purgatory isn't the only thing I have to show you today and we've not got a lot of time to do it. So are you going to get up now or would you much rather lay in the sand until you get kicked out? It doesn't really affect me either way."

Lifting her face to scowl at him, Roxy slowly pushed herself back up into a sitting position and stood up, noticing that her robes were not coated in sand or even damp like they would be in the real world. "Alright, you've dragged me to this stupid place, now what? Lead on, James Potter, show me what is you've got." She waved her hand, indicating for him to move forward. The sooner he got through all of this, the sooner that Roxy could go back to the real world and continue her mission of bringing to light the dangers of Phuong Itawa.

They walked across the beach, making no noise and leaving no footsteps. Off in the distance, Roxy spotted the roof of Shell Cottage and wondered what she would find if she were to break away from James Potter and run off to find out. Would she never be able to, stuck in an endless loop that led to nowhere or would she come across an empty house devoid of all the little knick-knacks that made it truly become her aunt and uncle's home?

Thought she was sorely tempted to investigate, James Potter took that moment to grab her by the wrist and hurry her along, insisting that they had much to do and not much time to do it so Roxy would have to stop daydreaming and keep following him.

"But where are we supposed to be going, exactly?" she asked him, glancing behind her to catch one last glimpse at Shell Cottage. "It's not very nice to pop out of nowhere and kidnap people without telling them anything."  
"I'll tell you when we get there. It won't make sense until I show you in person anyway so there's no point in telling you just yet." His jaw was set tightly and he strengthened his grip on her wrist, moving so fast that Roxy was pretty much being dragged along at this point.

"No!" She yanked her wrist free and stopped short, putting her hand on her hips and gave the ghost her most stern look. "Now you listen to me, James Potter. In the last year, I have been pushed from one event to the next with almost no instructions. I have lost friends, I have lost what little innocence I had left, and now I'm being dragged into a world that may or may not exist but I definitely do not belong in. So I am telling you very firmly that I absolutely will _not_ take another step until you explain to me why you've dragged me to purgatory and bruised my wrists in the process. I'm tired of the whole master plan bullshit that comes with no explanations whatsoever. What do you _want_?"

He sighed and ran his hands through his hair again. "I'm telling you, it won't make sense until I can show you it in person. Otherwise you'll only want to leave and I won't be able to help you."

"How have you helped me anyway? What have you actually done except pop up every few months to hint at some greater secret, some master plot that is so far beyond me that my poor mortal brain will never be able to handle it. Oh, no, I need somebody older or wiser than me—wiser on the basis _that_ you're older—to explain everything to me! Stop giving me the same tired story, that I can't do anything, that I won't understand, that I need to be shown everything, have it explained to me only when it's absolutely crucial. How is that helping me—helping humanity?! What does withholding information actually get you, James Potter? You were a teenager once, surely you remember how frustrating it is to be treated like a child? Why not put a stop to that damn process and actually tell me the truth for once?"

The ghost gave her a strange look. "I was a teenager only a few years ago, yet I was a teenager fifty years ago all at the same time. I've forgotten and not forgotten my life back then, how I feel about being controlled by all of these rules of the spirit world. I was a rebel, the same as you, refusing to be controlled by laws or adults."

"And you still can, James. You can still say fuck the rules and help me out by actually giving me the answers now rather than at the last moment when it's pretty much too late to do anything about it other than wish I had known sooner."

"Very well. I am supposed to show you the face of your enemy, the one not yet born, who will come to destroy the world as we know it. She, like all the other as of yet unborn souls, resides here in this place of perpetual waiting until her time has come. They—the powers greater than myself—were hoping that I could bring you here to see if you could meet her, to get a grasp of what she could do and what she will do."

"Oh." Roxy blinked at him. Another enemy—and one that wouldn't matter until she was older? Wasn't dealing with Trinh and Phuong and the Faceless One already enough? How could someone new, someone not yet even born, be a threat? And, even more importantly, how was she supposed to fix any of this, to change a future that seemed pretty much set in stone?

"Will you come with me to see her?" asked James Potter, tilting his head slightly. "It may not seem important now but one day...one day it will be. Sometimes having patience is necessary."

"Fine. Take me to her."

They kept walking until Shell Cottage could no longer be seen and the sand of the beach began to lose all colour. The water stopped lapping against her ankles and became a cold splash against her cheek that almost stung but did not leave behind a sensation of being wet. The ground turned to hard rock and Roxy found herself tripping across the uneven surface. And then, out of nowhere, was that dreadful place she had heard of but never seen—Azkaban.

Azkaban looked like someone had allowed a child to keep a shoebox in the back of their cupboard for years and years until the entire thing turned grey and began to fall apart at the edges. Then, after the shoe box was effectively beaten up enough, it had been dropped onto a rocky slab in the middle of the ocean, where it was left to sag in on itself was the outside was slowly corroded and eaten away by salt water; the shape was that of something that had once been square but could no longer quite recall what such a position felt like.

Though Roxy had never seen Azkaban in person, she could immediately sense the feeling of intense depression that her uncle Harry, amongst others, had reported came hand in hand with the stone prison. She could only imagine how the place would have felt before mid-1998 when it was still staffed by Dementors; even now, with humans guarding Azkaban, the heavy darkness left behind by the previous 'staff' remained in only very slowly decreasing percentages over the years, a force so harsh that it permeated its way into purgatory.

James Potter escorted her to a rickety-looking wooden boat that sank dangerously into the water, though the ends of her clothes did not get wet as she sat down and when she ran her hand through the murky waves, it was like touching nothing but air.

"Is this still purgatory then?" Roxy asked the ghost, even though she already knew the answer. He pushed the boat off from the shore so that they magically began to bob towards the prison. "Is this still _my_ purgatory or have we walked into someone else's idea of hell?"  
He squinted at her. "It's part of 'purgatory', I know that, but I couldn't tell you if this place belongs to heaven or hell. She seems to like it well enough, being here. At the very least, she usually refuses to leave no matter who asks her to, or how they may try to coax her out. Though I can't say that I really blame her, wanting to stay with what she knows until it's her time to leave."

"Who is 'she'?" asked Roxy curiously. Were they visiting some long-dead former prisoner who had grown so used to their stormy prison that they called it home even in the afterlife? Or perhaps they were seeing the _yet to come_ for a prisoner who hadn't passed away—was this what Trinh Itawa would exist within after she passed away? Was this her idea of purgatory?

The ghost only silently ran his fingers through the water, his hair blowing in a breeze that could not be felt on the skin, at least not by Roxy.

Realising she would not get an answer from him just then, Roxy instead chose to look around at the choppy water through which they were moving. The water was even darker than that of the Black Lake at Hogwarts, so dark that it could have appeared to be glass if the water would stay calm long enough to be observed. Though she felt nothing, Roxy assumed that, if any of this were real, the wind here was very strong and very cold, as would be the water that they were speeding through at that moment.

The rocky shore came upon them suddenly, the boat crashing into the harsh edges of the stone, making Roxy nearly fall over from the force of the impact. She scowled and began to grumble, mostly to herself, but James Potter had no time to pretend to listen to her complain as he ushered her out of the boat, his hands pulling her up form the creaky boat before she could even react properly. The second that her feet touched stone, the boat rushed off in the opposite direction, back to where they had just come from.

"How are we supposed to get back now?" she demanded of the ghost, who merely wordlessly waved her on, an impatient expression on his face. "Hello? The boat just left, how are we going to get back to the other shore without it? Are you even listening to me?"

"This realm doesn't always have to work in the way that you expect it to," he replied evenly before taking her hand once more and escorting her through the front doors of the prison. "Who says that a boat has to be a boat, that a prison must house prisoners, that the wind must blow or the sea must roar? Who says that _anything_ has to be how humans expect it to be?"

As they walked through the prison, Roxy noticed how quiet it was—their footsteps echoed noisily against the walls. There were no guards and no inmates. It was just the two of them walking together, entirely along in a building meant to house more than a thousand people.

She could hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat, all of the little noises that proved she was still alive, still human. James Potter made none of these noises, remaining just as eerily quiet as Azkaban itself save for the sound of his shoes hitting the dirty stone floor. He was as silent as she was unintentionally noisy, making Roxy feel uncomfortable as she wondered if the ghost thought her to be full of unbearable clutter.

The place was dump, with unmade beds and trash lying abandoned everywhere. Papers, crisps bags, needles, bottles long emptied of their Butterbeer and Firewhiskey. She stepped over and around it all, somewhat in amazement at just how much clutter lay forgotten, as though the former occupants of the prison had all left rather suddenly and those who remained—if there _was_ anyone at all—showed no interest in clearing away the mess left behind those living here previously.

Moss had begun to eat away at the walls and floors, leaving entire sections that were open to the outside or led to long falls down to lower sections of Azkaban; it seemed as though the prison had been abandoned several decades ago, leaving the place to slowly weather away and fall to ruins, long-forgotten by the world.

But just as she was beginning to suspect that James Potter was messing with her or worse, lying to her, a sound echoed up from one of the lowest levels of Azkaban. There was a young woman somewhere in here, singing a song that had no words, leaving only a haunting melody that made the hair on Roxy's arms stand up.

"What is that?" she asked. When the ghost didn't answer, she wrenched herself free of his grip, putting her hands on her hips as she glared up at him. "You can't just drag me around everywhere without giving me any answers. I'm not just here for you to yank around until you get tired of doing so and disappear once more for weeks or months on end."

"She's your enemy, your worst enemy, more than any other person you'll ever have to face in your life, and potentially only matched by the chaos daemon, Khiro. She's the one who's going to take your life. Now," he narrowed his eyes at her, frowning, "would you please follow after me so I can introduce you to her?"

At a loss for words, Roxy shut her mouth with an audible click and did as he asked—she followed after him to meet the person who would one day kill her.

"Come on, she's through her," said the ghost, leading Roxy inside. There were no lights down below and no signs of life; the only thing greeting them were long stretches of more and more empty cells and a foreboding feeling that made her feel very uneasy. Down into the depths they walked until finally he raised his hand, indicating for her to stop. There was a cell in front of them, seemingly no different from the rest, just as trashed, just as despondent.

"The enemy of my future is locked away in the Azkaban of purgatory?" Roxy asked again, leaning forward to see if she could catch a glimpse of the woman. "This just doesn't seem like much of an issue to me. Just leave her here to rot permanently and it shouldn't be any sort of problem in the first place, don't you think?"

"Her mother will stay in Azkaban—your Azkaban—but the daughter will be freed not too long form now." He placed his hand on the cell bars. "I name you Iwyllah Diani, the ghost of what is yet to come, a ravager of the world. I present to you Roxanne Raechell, the approaching dawn, the mother of heroes. To this I demand a response. What say you?"

From the shadows stepped a girl with Asian features; she had brown eyes, pale skin, long dark hair that ended just above her elbows. Bruises were spread across her arms, stretching up her throat and collarbone. She had shadows underneath her eyes, giving her a very haunted appearance. Roxy knew immediately from looking a the girl that this was the unborn child that Trinh had mentioned during her trial. This was her daughter, Iwyllah.

Maybe twelve years old at most, Iwyllah looked between James Potter and Roxy, hungrily gazing at the two to discover all of their secrets, reveal anything that they might have to give away. Then, having found all that could be, she smiled, revealing pointed teeth behind pale lips.

"Not much of an enemy, is she?" ashed the girl in a snarling voice. "No threat to me, no threat to what we will come to do. She's normal, a mere mortal with no special capabilities. Why does Mother not crush her underfoot or send her away without a second thought, as you do with those who are not worth even a fraction of your time? I'm going to destroy everything you love one day," the girl said in a casual tone that could almost pass for innocent if it weren't for the inhuman gleam in her eyes. "There's nothing you can really do about it, even if you wanted to." She started singing tunelessly, her words eerily devoid of emotion. "The dawn isn't strong enough for a princess, the dawn can't stop those who come to rule. The dawn is weak and easily broken. The dawn runs away while royalty stays out to play."

It was clear from the child's menacing smirk that Roxy was the 'dawn' in this scenario; she knew her name meant dawn, a fact that her mother liked to toss in any time that she told the story about the day that Roxy had been born like she hadn't said the exact same thing a hundred times before.

But that didn't mean she was going to let some little kid intimidate her into backing off purely on the basis that she was a creepy little bitch with too much of a superiority complex for her own good. Roxy wasn't a coward.

She turned to look at James Potter, who had his arms crossed, a pensive expression on his face. "What's the point of her, exactly? I mean other than to be a little bugger, which I could tell before she even opened her mouth. Is she really some sort of threat to me or anyone else? Because right now she just looks like a little kid who isn't even ready for Hogwarts yet, making threats that might possibly—probably, even—have absolutely no weight to them. So what's the damn point of her? Why would anyone allow her to live, outside of the usual hesitance to kill children, which I wouldn't think any of the Itawas could ever feel guilty about?"

The ghost looked at her contemplatively. "You can be a right morbid little shit sometimes, you know that?" Roxy shrugged. "But to answer your question, in Phuong Itawa's mind, her granddaughter serves several purposes that make her beneficial to keep around. For one, she's good at keeping her mother controlled—Trinh is very desperate to reclaim not only her children but her power and authority, something she sees as being achievable only through her daughter, which Phuong is exploiting. Secondly, Iwyllah is a bit of an oddity even amongst those of Starkid. The girl was born of two members of Starkid, two abnormally powered humans who came together to create someone who carries the strengths of both her parents. She is only the second of her kind—the first being her older brother, the boy known as August Batts. And you may wonder why it is that Phuong didn't use the boy as her special weapon; well, her first little 'experiment' went askew almost immediately. She allowed mother and child to grow close even though they weren't aware of their connection. Because he was so new, Phuong was uncertain of how to handle him and therefore lost control of the boy when the time came. She would not allow herself to make the same mistake with the second child. So, to remove the daughter from the belligerent, disobedient mother, she had Trinh arrested, claims parenthood of the baby, and uses the child as a tool for her own means. That means that _she_ has the power by way of her granddaughter."

"Do you see it now?" James Potter asked, staring at Roxy. "Do you finally understand what you—or rather, your future—will be up against? If you think Khiro or Phuong Itawa were hard, she will be even worse, the absolute pinnacle of them both. Human and daemon combined as it never should have been."

But how was she supposed to respond to something that was, by its very nature, indescribable? Iwyllah gave off an air of something more—stronger, faster, smarter, better. The girl was beyond anything a human had ever been, more so than even her own mother, who barely qualified as human to begin with. Iwyllah clearly viewed everything and everyone all at once through a single glance and, worse, she was confident in the truth that nothing would ever be as good as she was.

"Why'd you call me the mother of the future? What does that even mean, considering I'm not pregnant and have absolutely no intention of being so any time soon? I can't be the mother of the future if I'm not a mother all."

"And in fifteen years? If you are a mother then?" He shook his head. "Your child is a long time coming, don't worry. It's _her_ I'm worried about." He nodded at Iwyllah, who bared her teeth at him in response. "She's coming soon, much too soon for my liking. Her day of power is also yet to come, like your child, but it is not too far away for you, unfortunately."

"What am I supposed to do about that? Can't I prevent it all from happening instead of forcing myself to create and raise the next supposed saviour of the world? Or what if I don't want to have kids at all, huh?"

"Lily worried about raising Harry, too, knowing he might one day die at the hands of Voldemort. Knowing we might lose ourselves in the process—but she was brave."

"Brave? Yeah, and look where it got you, both of you dead at twenty-one!" Roxy cried throwing her hands into the air. "If I'm the 'mother of the future', I think I should get a say in whether or not I'm willing to risk my life for something not yet even conceived of yet alone born." She grabbed his sleeve." "Make another portal, _now_. I'm ready to leave."

Flustered, James Potter did as she said, tearing another hole in the air that led to the same alleyway from earlier. Without saying a word, he let Roxy step through, leaving him with the childish laughter of Iwyllah as she watched her enemy flee.

"She's a coward," the girl told James Potter, a smirk on her lips. "She's a little coward and one day I'm going to rule the world because of her."


	70. Interpreting (false) souls

It had been a month since Roxy's conversation with James Potter and the daemon child but she had become no better health-wise, mentally or physically. Her entire family had now gotten into the act of insisting that she was malnourished, unstable, stressed out, exhausted, and any other words they could come up with to describe her increasingly haggard appearance.

Yet Roxy kept proclaiming that she was fine and there was nothing that could possibly be done to remedy the situation. She didn't like how they all hovered over her nowadays, judging every yawn, every bite of food mindlessly pushed around her plate. Her family and friends had turned into jackals that were waiting for the second that she would slip up and reveal her failures.

Mum kept threatening to make Roxy come live back at the old flat once more, insisting that unless Roxy showed signs of improvement soon, she and Grandmum Molly would be forced to tie the twenty year old to a chair and make her eat until she was healthy again.

But they didn't understand, Roxy told herself. They didn't even remotely begin to grasp everything that she was doing, the sheer amount of effort and work that she put into what she did. If everyone else refused to admit that there was a potential of threat, the Roxy had no choice but to double down on making sure that she and everyone else was safe from harm.

There was no choice to simply sit back, relax, and pretend like everything was alright. That would get more people hurt or killed, leading to more blood on Roxy's hands because she did nothing, the same as everyone else around her. No, she would not make their mistakes.

Besides that, if James Potter was telling the truth about Iwyllah and Roxy's far-off in the future child, then she was duty-bound to track the movements of the Itawa family, even if everyone else seemed to think Roxy was bordering on obsessive. If they wouldn't listen to her and if they wouldn't believe her, what action was available other than piling the work onto herself and hoping for the best?

The work was taking its toll on her, she knew. Roxy had lost weight, more than was appropriate, given her small stature and naturally light frame. Her hair was falling out in clumps, clinging to her hairbrush or her hands when she ran them across her head. Shadows had formed under her eyes as sleep became increasingly rare due to a mixture of long nights researching and poor dreams that left her in a sweat and made her scream.

Silencing and Appearance-Changing Charms had become her new best friends, along with Calming and Sleeping Draughts. It was the only way she could function properly any more instead of collapsing into a pile of panicked muttering and tears, rocking back and forth like someone who had been put under the Cruciatus Curse for too long.

She would not be beaten, Roxy swore to herself. She would not give up, give in, or resort to her Slytherin nature that cried for her to simply leave it all behind and never look back. If she did that, then the Itawas would win, the daemon would win, and the whole of humanity would become the ultimate losers as the world came crashing around them.

Roxy would not quit, regardless of what the effort of striving did to her.

* * *

She ran her fingers across the door of her father's old bedroom, staring at the spot where the wood was palest. She wondered if, even after everyone here was dead and it was some great-great-grandchild in possession of the Burrow, if the wood would still be lighter than everything else around it, assuming the room was left to itself.

Downstairs, the rest of the family was off in their various directions—preparing for dinner, listening to the radio, playing outside in the snow, or avoiding Uncle Percy and his speech for next week's interview with _The Daily Prophet_ about his campaign for Minister. But Roxy was here, alone, just her and the door.

It wasn't the same, the strange pull to go inside and see what was there. The room was just a room, empty and abandoned as it had been for most of Roxy's life. All that waited inside for her was more long-forgotten memories of her deceased father and uncle, as much a shrine to the memory of the Weasley twins as Freddie's room in the flat above the family shop was a shrine to him. It was not a place for anyone but ghosts to exist. She did not belong here.

And yet, Roxy still held her hand on the wood, inexplicably letting her fingers drift down to the door handle and pull it open, revealing nothing more than what she already knew would be there—darkness and a museum of ancient tricks and toys.

There was a whispering voice behind her, calling out her name—that or it was the strong breeze that came along with opening a mostly sealed room. She took a step forward, wondering if the ghost of her uncle or father would appear if she asked loudly enough for one of them to show up. But she said nothing, turning to look at the burnt and tattered remains of the curtain that had been slowly eaten away by a combination of moths and botched spells.

Dust rained from the curtains when she tugged at the end of them, sending several decades to coat her shoulders and hair. Roxy shook it off of her, sighing in annoyance. Mum and Roxy had never stayed in this room back when they were still a family of four and now, they entered the room every six months at most.

"Anyone here?" Roxy called out, not expecting a response, nor was she very surprised when there was only more silence. "Ollie, ollie, oxen free!" She laughed at her own immaturity. "I'll count to ten and then all the ghosts and boggarts better show themselves." Eyes closed, she began counting. "One...two...three..." There was a rustling noise. "Four...five...six..." The rustling grew louder. "Seven…eight...nine..." Roxy became nervous as she sensed that someone else was in the room with her. "Ten. Ready or not, here I come."

"Hey, little sister, did you miss me?" asked the ghost of her brother when she opened her eyes. He smirked as her jaw dropped. "What? Aren't you excited to see me again?"

"But...he said...he said you couldn't come back, that you were too new, too weak to be able to appear. How are are you even here right now, in front of me? Shouldn't you be off with all the other ghosts in whatever your equivalent of heaven or hell is?"

Freddie opened his hands, palms out, and shook his head. "Oh, foolish little Roxy, don't tell me you underestimated me? No matter what it is, if you tell me not to do something, that'll only make me want to do it that much more. It's probably the reason I died in the first place."

"Why are you here, though? Why now, of all times to appear? If you could show up, why not when it was more prudent of you?"

He shrugged. "You never asked me to show up before, so I figured you didn't want to talk. And then after you learned everything about Dad or about me and Emily, I knew you'd be pissed as hell and wanting to punch something, which couldn't be me since I don't have corporeal form. But you said that any ghosts here should show their face, so that meant me, too. Or at least that's what I think it means. Ghosts rules aren't always the most defined."

"But you're..." Something in Roxy' brain clicked and she put her hands on her hips, glaring at Freddie. "Wait, did you know about Dad and Anne before or after you died? Because if nobody bothered to tell me but they told _you_ , I'll be so pissed! When did you find out?"

"I dunno." Freddie shrugged again, nonchalant. "I was probably thirteen or fourteen years old? Mum asked me to move some of the out of date inventory to the storage room and I found a box of old love letters from Anne to Dad and vice versa. The most recent one was ancient—like two years before you were born—but it was just sitting there, this whole other side to Dad that I had never known before, nor ever _wanted_ to know. I felt as bad as if the affair had just happened. I doubt that any of them ever knew that I found out, though, because I never mentioned it to anyone, too afraid to hear what might be said. But I definitely never saw Dad in the same light afterwards. I supposed that's why the didn't tell either of us, to keep everything the way it was before Anne."

"Do—do you think I was only born because Dad tried to make up with Mum after everything that happened? Is that the only reason I was born, as a consolation prize to a snubbed wife?"

Freddie shook his head, frowning. "No, not at all. Like I said, I think the relationship was cut off around two years before you were born, after Mum and Dad talked everything out with a therapist and started being happy again." He paused. "Though I dunno, that was a while ago. I was what, six when you were born? Maybe I'm remembering it wrong."

She wasn't quite sure that she bought the story of her parents' renewed love, especially since Freddie _had_ been so young at the time, nor did she fully believe that Dad had ever given up on Anne. But she decided to move onto a new subject. "What about you and Emily? What happened with you two? I thought you guys were in love and had a _committed_ relationship and then she turns my whole life upside down with all of this hidden information about what a shitty person you were to her. What happened?"

"It's complicated, Rox." Her brother let out a heavy sigh, disappointed and embarrassed. "I mean, I was young, I was an arsehole—not just to her, but to everyone—and I thought that I could get away with anything just because I was handsome and part of an influential family as well as being a superb Quidditch player."

"So you cheated on her multiple time sand made her feel like she was an awful person who had done something wrong to deserve your hostility? What, because you _could_? Are you kidding me, Freddie? That doesn't sound like you."

"Like I said, it's complicated. Em told you, no doubt, about how we were never a good fit to begin with. The two of us were always either arguing or making out. There were no in betweens, no doing the relationship halfway. We were either madly in love or hated each other so intently, we wanted them to die. Everything was an absolute for us and we absolutely did not work out. That doesn't excuse my behaviour towards her, but how many times did she cheat on me, huh? How many times did she threaten to break up with me and then swear she'd kill herself if I left? Emily wasn't a great person either and our relationship could never have lasted. And I hate that I got so mad about Dad cheating then went and did the exact same thing myself but I couldn't stand being in a relationship with Emily but also couldn't imagine actually ever breaking up with her."

"But Faith _is_ your daughter, right? Like she actually is my niece and this isn't something Emily claimed to scam Mum?"

He waved his hands at her, looking impatient. "I dunno, Rox. She looks a bit like you did when you were the same age, with that mop of curly hair and excitement for new adventures, I'll give you that, but then again, who can really say? Her mother swears she's mine and I can't say anything against her since I have no way of proving it one way or another, but I just don't know. Maybe she is my daughter. Maybe..."

Though, again, an air of uncertainty clouded the space between them, Roxy chose not to fight her dead brother on the issue. "So this whole you being a ghost thing. Have you been following after me the whole time? Because if so, that is super sketchy and you need to stop."

That made Freddie laugh. "I don't watch you all the time, but I've been around over the years, involving myself as much as I can. after dying, I realised how much I had missed in my hurry to become somebody important so I decided to watch over you as a guardian angel of sorts, to keep you safe as best as I could."

"So all of the things up in the wrong place over the years? Or the fact that I kept waking up in your bed all of the time? Is that how you've been 'watching over' me, by messing around making me thing I'd gone mad?"

"No." He crossed his arms over his chest. "Roxy, a daemon has been trying to get at you and the other Weasleys for several years now. Those were how I tried to get your attention, by causing stuff to change or become misplaced. And when I took you to my room, it was to keep Khiro from stealing you away and doing whatever he wanted to you. I still had my old wards up along with all of those that I've been able to put up as a ghost to keep him from getting to you or bring you harm." He seemed almost angry about it. "Just think about it, that little voice in your head that keeps telling you to give in, that's the part of your brain that he's been able to get into so far. Without me, you'd be in the same situation that Lucy and the rest of those coma patients had been in for all those months, except there'd be no one to rescue you."

"He's in my head?" asked Roxy incredulously. "Is he controlling me now, too? How long has he been in there, telling me what to do, how to complete what he wants rather than what needs to actually be done?"

Her brother nodded. "He's been in your head for a while now, Roxy, without you even being aware of it. The creature, the daemon, is very manipulative, twisting everything you do and say to fit his little plans. The only way to be able to get away from him would be to leave for the muggle world and not bother looking back. He'd assume you gave up."

"Go to the muggle world?" Roxy cocked her head, considering Freddie's words. "Do you really think that'd work? He'd actually leave me alone? I'd be free of all of this...shite that's been happening since last June? I'd have to leave the wizarding world?"

"Yeah, it's the only way I can think of that would do anything." He narrowed his eyes at her. "But you aren't really considering that, are you, Roxy? You wouldn't actually leave behind your heritage and give up your life just to get away from him, would you? He would win if you were to run away and hide and that would go against everything you've been working towards. You wouldn't want to do that, right?"

She couldn't give him an answer, turning her head away to avoid making eye contact. "I hear screaming any time that I close my eyes, assuming that I'm even able to sleep long enough to start dreaming. I can barely eat or concentrate on anything because it feels like my whole life centres around this obsession with the Faceless One and the Itawas. I'm not in control of myself any more, not my thoughts, not my actions. Everything I do now is to reach a singular end goal and it's eating me up from the inside—I don't know what to do now, whether any o this is really worth it at the price of people's lives and at the price of my own mental health."  
"But you won't actually leave, will you? You're a Weasley and a fighter, someone who never gives up in the face of danger. Just because things are becoming too hard doesn't mean you're going to run away, does it? You're stronger than that—more determined than that. Wouldn't you sooner die than let him win?"

"I'm not like you, Freddie. You knew that even back when I was boarding the Hogwarts Express for the first time. I'm not a brave Gryffindor, resilient to the very end. The Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin for a reason. If I feel unsafe, after a certain point, don't I have no choice but to put myself and my own well-being first? Shouldn't I rather want to be alive and let someone else do all of the stupid things that are necessary to save the world? I want to help, but..."

"So instead you're going to tuck your tail between your legs and run away? Did your friends' deaths mean nothing to you at all? Do you not care that running away will only risk more lives?"

"How dare you?" Roxy threw her shoe at him, though it only sailed right through the centre of Freddie's chest. "How dare you use the deaths of my friends against me? Were you always just an awful person and I was too naive to realise how bad you were? Or has death may you worse—instead of being an arse to your girlfriend, you're a shite person to _everyone_?"

Freddie scowled. "You're the same immature little kid as when I died, always insisting that your way is the best and that you're so much smarter than everyone else. Do you honestly think that you have any real control over your own life, that you aren't merely a pawn in the plan that is so infinitely larger and more important than you? Oh, right, I forgot that you're _special_ and don't have to follow the same rules as everyone else because you're just so far above them all. Remind me again why it is that you think that?"

She wished her brother had a more solid form merely so she could repeatedly punch him in the face. "I don't know why I ever looked up to you as a kid or why I wasted so much time being upset about losing you and then pretending to not be upset. You were never a good brother to me—I was just that annoying kid sister that following you everywhere and made you look uncool. I heard of some of the things you told other people, about how I was little more than just another younger cousin to you, too immature and with too large an age gap to even pretend to be interested in ever doing anything with me."

"That's a lie!" he snapped, though Freddie appeared rather shaken by her words. "When did I ever say anything like that?"

"To James? To Leanne's husband, that Creevey guy? To Emily? To anyone who has ever mentioned you and I in the same breath? You even just called me immature to my face. You've never looked at me with anything less than annoyance, never took my hand before making sure that no one else saw, never played with me without complaining the whole time. Did you ever care about being my brother? Did you care about being a good person? No wonder Emily speaks with such contempt when she mentions her name."

Through his anger, Freddie became corporeal just long enough that he was able to slap her, his hand leaving a stinging red mark on Roxy's face before the rest of his arm turned ghostly once more, leaving him to stumble right through his sister's shocked form.

"Leanne's dead, did you know that?" he asked her in a cruel voice. He nodded when her mouth opened even further. "Back in May, she was killed by agents of Khiro, her blood used to make him stronger, though they made it look like she was involved in a wreck. Mum didn't tell you because you were already stressed out and she didn't want you to worry. And her twins—they only just turned a year old yesterday, didn't they? Isn't it awful that they'll have to live in a world where their mother is no longer alive simply because no one would step forward to prevent Leanne's killers from running around and doing as they pleased?"

"That isn't my fault," insisted Roxy, clenching her fists. "How would I know he would target her? That _isn't_ my fault."

"But you could have done something to stop her from dying, couldn't you? Lea was the closest thing you had to a sister but you have visited her in nearly a year and now you never can! But then again, what do you care? You have that little girl, Chelsea or whatever, the product of the very people you're trying to stop. Mum and you both, sucked in by a few tears and promises that she's a _good person_! Can you prove that any of what she says is true, that she isn't simply making all of it up to garner sympathy? The girl was raised by McClane and the Itawas after all."

"Chloe is a good person, I don't care what lunacy you've come up with in your jealousy that I've...I don't even know what it is you think I've done. Replace you somehow? She needed a sister and a mum and we were willing to provide her with both. Your response to any of this is completely irrational—she's sixteen years old for Merlin's sake."

Freddie laughed bitterly. "And as we all know, you can't be a bad person at sixteen. Voldemort hadn't killed anyone at sixteen, right? Oh, except for his father, grandparents, and an innocent girl. Surely that means that your so-called _little sister_ couldn't possibly also do terrible things. It's not like she's been trained since childhood for the purpose of destruction."

"This is different—she's different!" Roxy wished she had realised sooner in life how awful her brother could be.

"How do you know she's different? Can you prove it?" He stepped forward, getting directly in Roxy's face. "You saw her during the attack on Diagon Alley, how quickly she fell into the idea of using her powers to take down her enemies. And who cares if she was on the 'right side' this time if you can't guarantee that she'll do so every time? What if _you_ become her enemy either because she becomes mad at you or because Itawa uses her powers to turn the girl towards darker desires? Can you say with absolute certainty that your new sister won't hurt you?"

Roxy crossed her arms over her chest. "You're being entirely preposterous, Freddie. I can't believe I ever thought you were a good brother, not when it turns out you were just this awful person all along, to your girlfriend, to me, to my friends."

"And you're just some short little kid with this idea in your head that you're more important than you truly are. You've let liars and fake prophecies feed into a sort of narcissistic ideal of why you're involved in all of these insane journeys and battles. But the truth of all of this is that you're just some girl, the same as everyone else, no different than anyone born into this world. You'll die some day as ordinary as those who came before you and those who'll come after you and trying to convince yourself otherwise is what's truly preposterous."

"And Uncle Harry being wrapped up in a prophecy that clearly turned out to be totally true? His is the only prophecy to have ever come true and all others are made up nonsense?"

He leaned in even closer. "You learn things, being dead, the sort of things that living people would never be able to handle. The stories you heard about Uncle Harry and his great prophecy aren't as black and white as you might think them to be. Did you know that all of that almost didn't happen to him? There were two boys born who fit the parameters—Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom. It didn't necessarily have to be our uncle who ended up as the supposed saviour of the world. In fact, it didn't have to come to pass at all if Voldemort hadn't heard about it all or chosen to ignore it when he did hear it. Instead, he made the whole thing become true by panicking about the situation. Prophecies aren't real and the only ones who supposedly 'come true' are that which we bring upon ourselves, and so people give it credit as though it were real."

The mocking smirk on his face was unlike any expression she had ever seen her brother make when he was alive and it caused a rush of disgust to surge through her blood, leaving Roxy with tightened fists and a huge scowl. Whatever had happened in the six years since his death, this creature was no longer her brother, not if he was saying these sorts of things.

"I don't care what you have to say any more, Freddie," she told him coldly. "You ought to have just stayed dead and stayed away. It'd be best if you didn't make any attempted to contact me in the future—I don't want anything to do with you from this point forward."

Eyebrows raised and still grinning at her, almost maliciously so, he replied, "Whatever you want, little sister. Your wish is my command, I exist only to serve you." He snickered. "Though may I ask one thing? Would you kindly disappear in the last moments of this year?"  
With that, his words still sinking into her head, Freddie—or, rather, what she had been led to believe was Freddie—faded from sight, chuckling maniacally as Roxy realised the mistake she had made just a second too late.

Her attempts to run to the spot where the daemon had stood proved fruitless as he disappeared entirely before she could even taken a step, leaving Roxy to lunge forward at nothing and nearly crash into the window pane that overlooked where Remy and Will were building a snowman along with Uncle Bill.

The daemon had tricked her, taking the image of her beloved brother, and exploited every single fear Roxy had ever felt about him—that Freddie wasn't as good as she thought, that he didn't love her, that the cruel things Emily had told her were all true. He had played her and Roxy fell for it so quickly, as desperate as she was deep down to see her brother again.

Outside, the sounds of the five and two year old boys laughing drifted upwards, the faint noise of their happiness reaching her ears and making Roxy stumble forward, needing to cling to the wall to avoid falling over. She and Freddie would never have one of these moments of innocence and frivolity—he had always been too much older than she and then he left her behind altogether. Unlike the two siblings outside, Freddie and Roxy had never been destined to become close.

Perhaps life _would_ be better if she were to simply disappear.

* * *

Lily watched sullenly as Lucy and her boyfriend chatted by the sitting room fire. He had been bouncing little eight month old Ruby the whole time, seemingly unaware of Lily's dark gaze on the happy little family.

It was common family gossip that Lucy had fooled around with her last, and only other, boyfriend, a guy in her year by the name of Luke Bryant. She ended up getting pregnant and he ran off after finding out. Not long after, Lucy miscarried and kept the whole ordeal a secret from everyone except her sister, Molly. Even now, not all the details were known, although it had been uncovered that the baby—Lucy was convinced it would have been a boy—was named Ryan and would be the same age as Remus and Faith if he were alive today.

But it would be entirely impossible to tell that Lucy was still suffering the pain of losing a child now, considering the smile on her face as she kissed Ruby on the head over and over, laughing any time that the infant made a noise.

It hit Lily at that moment that all of this could have been hers in another life, with a different view of the world. What if she had accepted Tolkien's marriage proposal and was now living a happy life as a mum and a wife, with a precious little girl to kiss? Or what if the existence of Thomas had come to her sooner and she decided to keep Ruby and wait for him?

Even thinking about either scenario, though, Lily knew neither of those futures would ever be hers to have. She and Tolkien hadn't been a good couple even when they were just dating—adding in a young infant and a forced wedding wouldn't make them suddenly love each other. And Thomas had already told her he wouldn't like to have kids for a few years, since she was only twenty-one and he, twenty-nine. Lily decided to refrain from telling him that, in only a few short years, she would be carrying his child whether he was ready for it or not. At this point, he probably wouldn't believe her anyway.

"Hey. It's Lily, right?" asked Philip suddenly, looking up at her. With shortly cropped blond hair and green eyes, he looked almost like he could be the older brother of Peter, Molly's boyfriend. It was a weird thought. He smiled at her, but looking at him, there was just something off that she couldn't put her finger on.

She nodded upon realising that they were now both looking at her. "Yep, Lily Potter, one of Lucy's many cousins. You know how the Weasley family is, though. We're really good at having lots of kids. After all, you should see our grandfather's brother's side of the family—nine sons, each with children who have children of their own. It's pretty much what we're known for at this point, having kids upon kids, populating the world all by ourselves."

Her cousin caught the subtle jab, judging by her frown, and turned to Philip to explain, "Lily is is Ruby's biological mother. She claims to want nothing to do with children, especially her own, but I know deep down that, in a few years, she'll realise otherwise."

"Yeah, because being a mum at twenty-one was definitely always my dream and I'm secretly bitter and angry that I gave away a burden that I never asked to bear. But, hey, at least I didn't get knocked up at _nineteen_ , huh? That'd be even worse, if you ask me. And if Tolkien had been the one to break up with me instead of the other way around because he wanted nothing to do with the baby or being a dad? Talk about embarrassing."

"Two years' different and you're still so immature?" replied Lucy, her ears burning red and belying her calm tone. "I certainly when you finally do choose to have children that you're more grown up about the whole situation because the way you are right now, Ruby would be doomed with you for a mother."

"I'm lost," Philip interjected, looking between the two females. "What exactly is all of this about? Because you're clearly referencing something that occurred before I met Lucy but I literally have _no_ idea what that is. Would someone like to fill me in rather than try to kill or outsnark each other or whatever it is you two do in an argument?"

Lucy and Lily scowled at each other, but the older and arguably more mature of the two quickly backed down and nodded. "Back in seventh year, I began dating this guy named Luke Brenning, who wasn't that great of a person but I was seventeen and thought I was in love. He had grown distant and was secretly seeing some other girl by the time I found I was pregnant, two years later, so when I told him about it, he chose to dump me instead because life is easier that way, I suppose. Unfortunately, I lost the baby not much longer after and it's been hard, trying to get over the pain of it all. There are still some days that I just can't stop thinking about it."

"Wow." Philip's lower jaw moved back and forth as though he were chewing on a piece of gum. He considered his girlfriend's story before patting her sympathetically with his free hand. "You know I'd never cheat on you or leave you, right, Lu? I'll always be a good boyfriend."

" _We're getting divorced, Philip and I...he got some other girl pregnant—someone his own age, someone more grounded, he says...I thought he was my true love, but what do I know? I also think we'll find unicorns again some day or that faeries can secretly speak English. Clearly he's making the right decision in leaving me for someone else."_

Clapping her hands over her ears to drown out the bitter voice, Lily shook her head, startled by the angry, hurt tone to Lucy's words. She blinked upon realising that the present day Lucy was now watching her with concern and had to take in a deep breath of air in order to avoid snapping at Philip for something he had not yet done and would potentially never do, depending on how the timeline continued from where they were now.

"Are you okay, Lily? I didn't—I'm sorry for calling you immature. But you know how I feel about the whole Luke thing. It still hurts, a lot."

Lily nodded, barely even focusing on what Lucy was saying as she ran through what future-Lucy had said. Was _this_ the uneasy vibe she always got when around Philip, the subconscious knowledge that he would eventually hurt Lucy and throw her away like she was nothing?

She forced a smile onto her face as though everything were perfectly fine and there was absolutely no concern that she was currently looking at the man who would break her cousin's heart in the future. "It's alright," Lily replied, still with that thin smile. "I _can_ be immature a lot of the time, even I'll admit to that. And it was totally wrong of me to bring up the baby situation."

From Philip's arms, Ruby let out a huge yawn and waved her left hand in the air, tripping over the letters of the only words she knew yet—"mama" and "sleep". Her two mothers, biological and adoptive, both unconsciously smiled at Ruby's attempts to communicate.

"I guess it's time for a nap." Philip, holding tightly to the infant, got to his feet. "How much longer do you think it'll be before your grandmother finishes putting dinner together? Do you think we should just let her sleep through the whole thing and feed her later so she can have a nice, uninterrupted nap? Because Ruby's gonna fall asleep soon no matter what and I know it's usually best to let them keep sleeping and wait to feed them so they can get into regularly sleeping patterns but obviously she's your daughter so it's ultimately up to you, I guess, and—"

"Philip!" interrupted Lucy, laughing good-naturedly. "It's fine, just put her down and we'll see how things go. Gran might be another half hour or so anyway." She watched as her boyfriend nodded solemnly and whisked himself away up the stairs, then grinned at Lily. "I really do think he's the one, Lily. I mean, Philip is so sweet and caring and sensitive to what I need. I know it's only been five months but I genuinely do believe that he and I are meant to be together forever. I hope he feels the same way."

There was a sinking feeling in Lily's stomach. How was she supposed to tell her cousin, who was finally happy again, that this whole relationship might fall apart eventually, because of Philip? And what if she were to say that and her vision of the future never came true? She could potentially ruin a happy couple on entirely unfounded claims.

But that did nothing to diminish the uncomfortable sensation that she got any time that Philip spoke or looked in her direction. And even stranger that she felt that way when he had so far been nothing but nice. Was all of this just imagined because she knew what he may potentially do or was there truly something darker behind that smile of his? But then why would she have felt uncomfortable even before the vision of his cheating?

"He..." She paused, searching for the words. "He really seems sweet, Lu, and I can tell you like him a lot, but please be careful about your feelings, okay? Just in case?"

"In case of what?" asked Lucy, shaking her head. "Philip is nothing like Luke if that's what you're trying to warn me about. I'm older, I know more now, and I'm not going to let him just hurt me. Things are different this time, you'll see. Philip is the love of my life and I'm his."

Before Lily could respond, there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and then Roxy appeared in the doorway, skin flushed and tear tracks running down her face as she blinked at the two of them, a desperate panic burning in her eyes.

"Are you okay, Rox?" Lucy asked, leaning forward and giving her cousin a concerned look. "You're acting like...well, like you'd seen a ghost." She sat up quickly. " _Did_ you? Did Mr Potter come back to again to tell you something? Oh, does he finally have an idea about what to do with Mrs Itawa and the McClane guy, Sergio I think his name was?"

Roxy shook her head. "Not ghosts...the Faceless One showed up looking like my brother and said all sorts of terrible things."

"Oh, Roxy, don't listen to him, he's trying to tear you down. I thought the Burrow was charmed against intruders of any kind, though—I'll ask Granddad about it later—but poor Roxy, having to go through that. You know he was lying, don't you?"

"No," she told Lucy hoarsely, eyes wide. "He wasn't lying about everything. The Faceless One was right when he told me it would be best if I wasn't here any more. I'll only get more people killed. Itawa will back off if I go away. Besides that, I don't even want to be here any more."

With that, she left the doorway, her cousins staring after her in shock, confusion, and worry that Roxy had just threatened to kill herself.


	71. The last Christmas ever

Christmas had come once more for the Weasley family. Teddy and Victoire celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary while Aunt Fleur set out peonies and paperwhites all over the Burrow and the living spaces of the various Weasleys in remembrance of Dominique, who'd been missing, also for eight years. James showed his family the money he had been setting aside to buy a house for Caroline—his Christmas gift to her. Mum asked Roxy to hand out the holiday bonuses to the WWW employees and Starsha came down with Dragon Pox, allowing Julia Howle, the intern let in charge for the time being, the option to throw a party to celebrate the end of the year. Mia Itterman held a party so wild that the muggle police arrived on the scene to deal with a noise complaint only to discover that one foolish party-goer had drank themselves to near death.

All in all, it was a fairly exciting and jovial time for everyone, with good food and great friends all getting together to celebrate another year coming to a close.

Roxy, on the other hand, was not in much of a holiday mood. She had dropped to the dangerously low weight of thirty-two kilos, her hair was falling out, and her cheekbones protruded much too sharply from underneath her skin, giving her an almost skeletal appearance. Shadows bruised broadly underneath her eyes and her hands shook constantly.

Everyone around her could tell that Roxy had stopped eating or sleeping almost entirely from the way she staggered around in a confused daze and could barely hold herself together long enough to stay involved in a coherent and logical conversation with anyone who tried to ask her a question about her health.

On the last day of work, the twenty-first of December, as everyone else mingled and laughed, eating food and drinking Butterbeer, Roxy remained sitting at her her station, occasionally kicking at the wall or her desk in order to make her chair spin around wildly, leaving her dizzy and incapable of thought, which was her whole point in doing so, since she no longer wanted her mind to be endlessly consumed by painful thoughts and the uneasiness that comes with going down such dark paths as the one she was already headed down. She counted down the seconds until it was time to leave and then dashed out without saying a word to anyone else.

Currently, three days later, she was sitting at the counter of the joke shop, watching as the last few straggling customers wandered around the store in the hopes of finding that one great gift even though they'd left holiday shopping until Christmas and there was almost nothing still in stock left for them to buy.

A plate of biscuits was tucked underneath the counter and Roxy had been nibbling on them the whole day or else handing the treats out to any well-behaved child that came into the shop. Christmas music had been playing throughout the building earlier but the second that Anne stepped out to grab food for everyone, Roxy had Banished the radio to a storage closet and Silenced it, threatening the part-timers if they dared to turn it back on.

The shop would be closed for the holidays in less than an hour, at which point Roxy would be expected to head over to the Burrow and participate in all of the usual Weasley family activities, like decorating the house and helping to hide presents from all of the younger guests that were staying with Molly and Arthur.

She wasn't looking forward to spending so much time with her family, especially in such a small space. She had never been a big fan of Christmas festivities to begin with and now everyone kept bothering her about how unhealthy she appeared to be. Nor did she feel like being in a celebratory mood when the dark cloud of everything that had happened was still hanging over her, discolouring her interest in the world around her.

Aniya kept insisting that Roxy was showing all of the signs of clinical depression—pulling away from everything and everyone, losing interest in socialising or work or Quidditch, the lack of appetite, the lack of sleep, the way Roxy acted like she was walking around in a fog. She pushed for Roxy to go see a muggle psychiatrist since there was still no equivalent in the wizarding world, but nothing Aniya said would sink in. Roxy refused to believe that there was anything wrong with her; it was everyone else that was the problem.

On the other hand, Jo had confronted Roxy two days ago after the shorter girl refused to leave her room all day. Jo called her friend a bitch, demanding to know why she could just get away with being an arse to everyone just because she was in a shitty mood, as though the rest of them weren't also still upset about Meera and Lindsey and everyone else in the war.

She lifted her head at the sound of the door opening, the little bell chiming to alert that someone had entered or exited the shop. She caught a glimpse of blonde hair and perked up, thinking that perhaps Chloe had stopped by, but as the person came into view, she realised that it was only Victoire, tucking several shopping purchases into her purse as she approached the counter and smiled at her younger cousin.

"How lovely to see you here again, Roxy!" cried Victoire, bustling forward to awkwardly hug over the counter. "It's been far too long since you worked in the store. The shop needs a more hands-on approach by the family, I've always said so, ever since Dad had me work summers here for pocket change and a proper work ethic. How long ago did you last help out around the shop? Far too long, I know that, your mum was saying."

"I worked here last Christmas," Roxy replied shortly, shrugging. "It's not as though it's entirely uncommon for me to go lengths of time without helping, especially when I was still at Hogwarts. I almost always only work Christmas time any more, what with having a full-time job now." Not to mention that Roxy clearly recalled Victoire always complaining about having to work for the family store every summer holiday.

The blonde smiled blankly. "Ah, well, you know how the brain can become so easily scattered during pregnancy. I must have just forgotten the details." Yes, for the third time, Victoire was pregnant—five weeks along, according to Madame Elliot. No one was certain yet but Victoire kept insisting that she was finally having her little girl and had put Grandmum Molly to the task of knitting pink baby clothes, as many as possible before August.

"Yes, it must be the pregnancy." Roxy put her hand over her mouth to hide the smirk. "So why are you here now, Vic? I wouldn't think Remy or Will are quite old enough yet to get into pranking nor would I expect you'd be content with kickstarting that interest."

Victoire laughed and shook her head. "No, no, absolutely no way am I allowing joke wands and Tonne-Tongue Toffees into my home. But Teddy wasn't able to come pick you up—he won't be back from mission until late tonight—so they asked me if I would come to pick you up after the shop closed. I'm to escort you back to the Burrow."

"Grandmum Weasley doesn't trust me to get myself to her house? I _can_ Apparate myself, she does know that, right?"

"Yes, but she doesn't trust you to actually show up unless someone makes you. You don't like Christmas anyway but with everything that's been going on with your health and how sickly you look these days, she suspects that you might try to get out of celebrating the holidays with your family. That's why I'm here, to make sure that you don't just go back to your flat and sleep until the new year begins. Besides, it's Violet's first Christmas with us as a family and I _know_ you wouldn't want to disappoint her by not being there." Victoire was still smiling but there was a harsher, warning tone to her words, making it clear that Roxy didn't have a choice in the matter.

"Fine," she conceded. "But there's still another forty minutes until closing so you might as well make yourself useful while you wait."

* * *

There were too many people for the Burrow proper to handle so several offshoots had been temporarily added to handle everyone who had come together to spend the holidays with Molly and Arthur Weasley.

Rooms were divided up in this way: the remaining four Weasley children, along with spouses and children; Angelina, Roxy, Chloe, Emily, Faith, and Emily's wife and son, Kara and Alexander; each of Arthur's brothers along with their children and grandchildren; the Lovegoods, Longbottoms, Malfoys, and all other family friends, including Aniya, Jo, Desmond, and Kieran, who Roxy had not realised was invited this year until she walked into the kitchen and saw him sitting casually at the table like he'd been there all his life.

There were well over one hundred and fifty people trying to all stay on the Burrow property, which was about one hundred and forty-five more people than Roxy felt like dealing with on a good day—and today was certainly not a good day.

"Hello, all, how are you?" greeted Victoire, waving hello to the various occupants of the kitchen. "I've returned with the wayward Weasley. She couldn't escape the holidays, not with so many of us around to drag her back into the festivities."

The others nodded at her but Roxy merely stuffed her hands into her pockets and shrugged, not sure why she _hadn't_ just taken off before Victoire or anyone else could grab her and drag her along to these stupid Christmas traditions that Roxy wanted nothing to do with.

"Roxy," said Kieran, standing up from his seat. "Can I talk to you upstairs? There's something I want to tell you." He raised his eyebrows at her, tilting his head at an angle to make himself appear more innocent. "I promise it's not about how unhealthy you look or anything, it's totally unrelated to that, I swear."

"Right, I believe that." But she followed after him, the two of them heading up to the third floor, where the number of people dropped to just them. Roxy rested her back on the wall facing the stairwell, watching Kieran also sink to the floor. "So? What is it that you wanted to tell me that couldn't be said in front of my family downstairs? Don't tell me you're about to confess your love for me or something equally ridiculous, because we've already gone over that and you assured me you were fine now."

"Uh, no, no, that's not it at all." Kieran shook his head, his whole face turning red from embarrassment. "I swear, I'm over everything between you and me, now that I've actually been given time to adjust to everything that's happened. I only needed to work it out by myself, which I didn't initially get to do because of, you know, being in a coma."

She chuckled. "Okay, so what, then, if not confessing your feelings for me? You wouldn't just drag me up here to catch up about old times and I can tell that's not why we're here just from how twitchy you're being, so what is it? What's so important that you and I had to hide up here and continue spreading my family's never-ending rumour mill? Because if we stay here too long, Grandmum will start planning a wedding."

"What _do_ you think about marriage?" Kieran asked, trying not to look at her. "N—not to me, no!" he protested when she narrowed her eyes. "I just meant the idea of marriage as a whole. Would you ever consider it if the right person asked or do you think you'd much rather keep things the way they are, never marrying or officiating things because it's _your_ relationship, not anyone else's so who cares about the labels? I mean, if you know you love them, do labels even really matter?"

Roxy smiled lightly at the male. "What's her name, then, Kieran? You wouldn't ask me if you hadn't found someone to fall in love with, so who is she?"

"Victoria Hess. She as a year behind us but in the same house. I, er, was assigned to be her mentor at work and we've been talking ever since. There's only been a few dates but I honestly think that I might be in love with her, like _really_ in love with her. I've not told her how I feel yet in case she doesn't feel the same way as me and I don't want to scare her off, but it wouldn't surprise me if Victoria ends up being the girl I marry. She's funny and smart and cute and..."

"Not me?" asked Roxy casually. She chuckled. "We never did work together as a couple, I think you and I can agree on that. But if you've found someone to be happy with, then I'm happy for you. Everyone deserves to find something or someone who brings a smile to their face."

"But you haven't found that yet, have you, Roxy? No matter how hard you try to hide it, I can hear it in your voice and see it on your face—the unhappiness, the paranoia, the frustration. It's all eating you up from the inside. When did you last have a good night's sleep or eat a full meal? A month ago? Two months ago? You can't keep going on like this, driving yourself into the ground. All the time, you tell other people how to solve their problems and encourage them to help improve their lives to be better and yet you've done nothing at all to help yourself. _I'm_ happy, as is everyone else, relatively, because we're all moving on with our lives and getting back to normal, but you're stuck in the exact same place as always, refusing to allow yourself to recover."

"I don't know what you mean." She looked away, flushed and scowling. Was it truly so obvious how messed up and shaken she had become even on the inside? Or had Kieran become more observant over the last year than she ever expected of him?

He shook his head. "Why are you bothering to lie, Rox? Quit pretending to be stronger than you are. Just think about it—I've got Victoria, Aniya has Desmond, Lily has that Thomas guy, and who do you have to lean on? Even Jo has a boyfriend now. And beyond significant others, what about work? Do you even like your job any more? Do you like to hang out with people, go places, do things at all? Are you able to enjoy life still or are you too busy obsessing over a danger that's gone, disappeared, and not your problem now?"

"I'm fine, Kieran, really I am," Roxy snapped, no longer pleased to speak with her old friend. "Everyone keeps asking me this question over and over as though I might answer differently the next time. But I'm working through things at my own pace so there's not need to constantly hover over me and ask me to spill all of my personal problems that don't even matter that much in the grand scheme of things."

She got to her feet, shaking her head at Kieran before walking away from him. He said nothing more to her and made no sign that he would try to follow after Roxy, content to simply let her stalk away, her hands balled into fists and an annoyed expression twisting her mouth into an ugly scowl, brow tightly knit.

No one understood, nobody at all. They all asked the same damn question over and over, never accepting that when she said she was fine, it meant that she was _fine._ It was as though, just because Roxy wasn't smiling and singing Christmas carols along with everyone else, it meant that she was an emotional wreck who couldn't let go of her obsession with the Faceless One.

And that was the other problem she had, tha the others had already so quickly moved on to a life in which those two were no longer problems and certainly not dangerous, as though Phuong Itawa had fallen asleep and wasn't even now actively planning their destruction and deaths.

She didn't bother waving to Victoire or Grandmum Weasley when she stomped back down the stairs, making both women frown and follow after her with their eyes, wondering what on earth Roxy and Kieran could have talked about that had her so bothered. But then again, she'd been unusually touchy since September and the whole family was getting used to it—and becoming annoyed by her attitude as well.

Roxy headed outside, hands in her pockets and feet kicking at the snow all around her as she wandered between the temporary houses of her extended family, which mostly seemed to consist of tents that had been charmed to appear to be much larger on the inside than they appeared.

One of the tents opened and an auburn-haired girl stuck her head out, running her eyes up and down Roxy's form. The two of them spent several long seconds trying to figure out who in the hell the other one was and how they fit into the Weasley family.

"It's Dawn, right?" asked Roxy uncertainly. Dawn was one of her many second cousins once removed on her paternal grandfather's side, who older brother had even more offspring than Arthur did, something Roxy hadn't thought possible until meeting her Great-Uncle Armurus.

"Yeah, that's me. And you're Roxanne, right? Cousin Georgie's daughter. I think I remember you getting sorted and how shocked everyone was after you were placed into Slytherin." She smiled politely. "Of course I was in Gryffindor, what, a year ahead of you at best? I always thought you were rather nice for a Slytherin."

"Er, thanks, I guess?" Roxy couldn't tell if Dawn was being sarcastic or not, nor did she care enough to actually find out.

"So how's your year been going, Roxanne? It's not over yet, I know, but it's pretty much done, yeah? Only what, less than a week left to go? Honestly, I'm glad we're on holiday now, work has been grinding on me and I'm grateful for a chance to take a break from all of it without being forced to use up some of my sick days. Wouldn't that just suck, using up all of your days and then actually getting sick? My mate, Nicky, did that and now she's stuck at the office trying to get through all of her work done that she put off in favour of jetting around the countryside getting high."

"Dawn, hush up and let the girl speak. You ramble far too much for a proper conversation to ever be held," interjected a grey-haired woman sitting just inside the tent in an old rocking chair. "And both of you young ladies must come inside here and get out of the cold before you freeze to death and leave behind a pretty corpse and nothing else."

The two cousins shrugged and both ducked into the temporary shelter, sitting down at a kitchen table on either side of the older woman, who gave Dawn another stern look and shook her head in disapproval.

"I swear, didn't your fool of a mother teach you anything? You're supposed to introduce people who've never met." She leant across the table and shook Roxy's hand, stretching out with wrinkled skin and the smell of someone who rarely went out any more. "I'm Selenia, Armurus' wife. I helped to create the _other_ half of the infamous Weasley clan, including this silly girl right here who's ridiculous mother clearly never taught her how to have proper manners in polite company."

"Er, I'm Roxy—George and Angelina's daughter. He was the, um, younger twin, the one that, uh..." How could she best describe her father?

"Ah, the one-eared boy," interjected Selenia, saving Roxy from having to say what she really meant. "I always did like him, though I do wonder how Molly kept those two on track with their occasionally immature behaviour. I had three sets of twins myself, but only the last pair were identical—Douglas and Dennis. Dawn here is from my first set of twins—the older son, Robert, who married that Patterson girl despite my advice otherwise, and at only nineteen years old, too. The first child of that relationship was my first granddaughter—the second Weasley female born in seven generations—and they named her Willow. Dawn here is only half-Weasley therefore, as her mother chose to taken her husband's name, what is it again?"

"Tormann, Granny Selenia," replied Dawn, sighing underneath her breath. This was clearly not the first time that her great-grandmother had given this speech. "But you know that isn't fair anyway, Granny Selenia, since you love Mum and you love Grandmum, too."

"Love her now that she has a sensible head on her shoulders, perhaps." The other Weasley matriarch shook her head, unimpressed. She turned her attention sharply back to Roxy. "I believe that I read about you somewhere in the papers not too long ago. Was that your or have I confused you with one of Arthur's other little sprogs?"

Caught off-guard, Roxy stammered for several seconds, uncertain. "Er, well, I...uh, yeah, that was probably me if it was back in, like, October or September. _The Prophet_ wouldn't shut up about me and Albus—he's Ginny's younger son—because were both really involved in that battle at Diagon Alley a few months back and then I popped up in the papers again because I was involved in the whole trial. It was all treated like things were way bigger than they truly were, which _The Prophet_ tends to do when it's about our family."

"Hm." Selenia let out a small harrumph, still unimpressed. "A revolutionary, then, just like the rest of your generation. Came too late for the Blood Wars so you've been running about looking for your own cause, is that it? I'll have you know, I lost two sons that day, two precious sons who died for a _proper_ cause, not just to see their name in the papers. I tell you, that's what's wrong with this generation, no respect for the past whatsoever. All you lot want to do is be famous instantly, to have all of the positives with none of the consequences. Little Dawn here, she's the exact same way. Twenty-one years old and still acting like a child with her skimpy outfits and flirting with all of those different boys. I was married and pregnant with my first by the time I was your age, not running around with a new boy every week. It's disgraceful, truly it is."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Granny Selenia, it isn't the sixties any more, we don't all have to live by your principles of how to be a 'proper' lady. Besides, it's not a new guy every week. I've been with Jared for the past three months now, not that you've been paying attention."

The old woman kept talking as though her great-granddaughter hadn't spoken at all. "Your parents are no better, if you ask me, letting their children behave so scandalously. If I had ever tried to wear anything like what you are now," she waved at Dawn's cropped shirt and shorts, "they would have paddled me until my bottom hurt too much to even _think_ about arguing with them. But that's the problem with that muggleborn father of yours, too lenient."

Suddenly, Dawn jumped to her feet, cheeks entirely red. She looked to Roxy. "I think I'd like to go for a walk now, how about you, Roxanne?" When Roxy nodded uncertainly, Dawn grabbed the younger girl's hand. "Come on, then, let's go."

"You'll freeze in such a skimpy outfit, young lady!" snapped Selenia. "Don't say I didn't warn you when you get sick."

Pointing her wand in the direction of one of the beds, Dawn Summoned her coat and then cast Warming Charms over herself and Roxy, all the while scowling at her great-grandmother, daring the aged woman to say anything more about the whole situation. When no retort came, Dawn stomped out of the tent with Roxy in tow, still befuddled as to what had just occurred.

"I know she's family and all, but do I honestly _have_ to like her when she says shite like that? For Merlin's sake, us Weasleys are supposed to be the progressive ones and she's bashing my father for his blood like it's somehow his fault, like muggles and muggleborns can't properly raise children just because they didn't have a wizard's upbringing. I think Granny Selenia is just permanently stuck in the 1960s now that she's gotten older. Are any of your great-grandparents like that, Roxanne? Well, I guess she's your great-aunt, which is close enough, so there's that fun fact—you're related to a potential racist."

"You talk a lot," replied Roxy bluntly. "And it's Roxy, not Roxanne. Unless I'm in trouble, it's never Roxanne."

Dawn blushed. "Whoops, sorry, Roxy. I guess if Granny Selenia is right about anything, it's that I sometimes talk too much and listen too little. So tell me, over-privileged post-war fame-seeking Roxy, what exactly was that whole incident at Diagon Alley actually about? It was in all the papers, but they weren't too bothered with explaining anything that was going on."

She didn't want to talk about this with Dawn, to rehash the story with someone who was only interested in a good story rather than uncovering the truth. Besides that, having to picture all of those dead people again made her head swarm with dark and violent thoughts that made Roxy clasp her hands over her ears and wince.

"Are you okay, Roxy?" Dawn placed a concerned hand on Roxy's shoulder, watching her sympathetically as the younger girl shook her head in a violent manner. "If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to."

"Some of my friends were dead because of what I asked them to do," confessed Roxy in a low voice, intentionally keeping her gaze on the snow ground as she spoke. "There are days where I wake up and wonder why we even bothered to fight when it doesn't seem to have made any difference. We didn't stop the right people, we didn't save lives—hell, all we did was and them. If we weren't helping people and if we didn't accomplish what we set out to do, doesn't that make me a failure?"

There was a long pause while Dawn processed what Roxy had said. She opened her mouth and them let it snap shut again, at a loss for words. Then, stumbling, she tried to speak again. "I just work to schedule Portkeys, I've never really lost any of my friends, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry I can't do much."

"No, it isn't your fault, I just kind of verbally exploded. It's just that I'm torn between knowing I should shove all the pain down and move on like everyone else and being _mad_ that everyone else is able to move on so quickly. They—my friends, family, co-workers—keep telling me that clinging to my frustration is making me ill, but what else am I supposed to do? Phuong Itawa is still out there somewhere, plotting, with an army of super-powered lunatic behind her. Trinh Itawa is in prison, but she seems to be planning something involving her unborn child. Sergio McClane has essentially dropped off the map again, though his radical fringe group is still around. Yet despite all of this, nobody is bothered. They're all too busy celebrating bloody Christmas and having a jolly old time as usual."

"What do you want to do?"

"Wha—? I don't understand." Roxy blinked at her, eyelashes fluttering in confusion. "I can't exactly change everyone's mind through sheer force of will. Believe me, if I could, we wouldn't have had need for a battle in the first place."

"That's not what I mean, though. I'm asking you, what is it that you want to do about all of this? You can't change their minds, you can't go back and change history since you'd need a Time Turner and all of those have been gone for over thirty years so what can _you_ do personally to make things better for yourself? What do you want to do?"

"I..." She shoved her hands into her pockets and scowled at the snow. Roxy didn't know what she wanted, but how could she when no one would let her mourn and recover properly?

"It's okay to not know. Just think about it, though. Do you want to say something to everyone, do you want to just sleep all the time, do you want to visit someone, do you want to just stay out here in the cold until you freeze to death? It doesn't matter what it is as long as you do what _you_ want to do rather than what other people expect you to do, and also make sure that you're content with yourself while doing it."

"Why do you know so much about, like, therapy or mental health if you 'just schedule Portkeys'? Most wizards don't seem to really understand mental health at all." She thought of her mum, who had refused to see a muggle therapist, calling the profession 'little more credible than Divination' despite Aunt Hermione's insistence that it would be good for her.

"Back at Hogwarts, I went through a really nasty break-up with my first boyfriend. I became depressed and anorexic and probably would have been hospitalised eventually but my dad took charge and set up an appointment with a therapist. I don't have to go now and I can eat properly again, but he taught me a lot of great things about her to improve my own happiness and lifestyle. So again, what is it that you want to do, Roxy? What's going to make you happy?"

"I...I...I want to leave," Roxy blurted. She didn't know where that statement came form but she knew it to be true. "I want to go somewhere where no one knows who I am, where no one can bother me. I want to leave all of my issues here and go somewhere else to live my own life peacefully and away form everything that's happened and will only keep happening for as long as I'm here."

"So you want to essentially run away?" Dawn's expression and tone remained neutral, giving no indication as to how she felt about Roxy's confession. "I've felt the same way, too, the desire to run away form food or family or happiness, but I never do because I know the urge will eventually go away and I'll go back to being content right here where I am currently. But what about you? Is it a fleeting urge or is leaving honestly something you want to do?"

"Yes, yes, I really do think that's what I want to do. I don't like being here any more, I don't like waking up every morning and staring at myself in the mirror, knowing I'm unsuccessful, knowing I'm never going to be able to live up to my own expectations, no matter what I do. I'm not content with how everything is going now and I don't think that's going to change any time soon."

"Then you ought to leave, because if you think that'll make you happy then you deserve to be happy. The only thing to keep in mind is that you'll be leaving everyone behind if you want to move on—your mum, your friends, everyone who cares about you. And don't tell me that you don't think anyone cares about you because they do, no matter how you may feel. There are always people who think you're worth something even when you don't personally feel that you are. But if you intend to leave everyone and everything behind, then pack your things and go."

Roxy nodded, feeling a pounding in her chest and head. She had finally figured it out, how to make things better, thanks to Dawn. There was now a path out of the mess that her life had become."Thank you," she said. "Thank you for understanding rather than judging me, like everyone else always does."

Dawn opened her mouth to say something but then the door to the Burrow opened and the senior Molly Weasley came outside, her shadow stretching across the white snow, catching the attention of the two young women. They turned to face her, and from the tents, hands poked out, attracted by the light.

"Dawn, Roxy!" called Grandmum Weasley. "It's time for Christmas dinner and then we'll let the younger kids open up a few of the presents. Hurry up and join us, you two."

Roxy headed inside for what she was pretty confident would be her last Weasley family Christmas; her hands still trembled, but now it was with genuine excitement. Things were going to change soon, she could feel it in the air.

* * *

She was beginning to show now, having approached her fourth month of pregnancy. Here in Azkaban, hiding within the confines of her darkened cell that was hardly larger than a cupboard, she could stretch her arms out and touch both walls with relative ease.

Food was twice a day—two slabs of plain, dry bread, a cold soup with almost no flavour to it, and every now and then, a piece of fruit close to going bad. They were given water with every meal, served in a plastic cup, as was everything else delivered at meal time, to keep prisoners devoid of weapons of any kind. Trinh was also given potions alongside her food in order to keep her healthy, after she threatened to take her own life if they didn't help her during her time of pregnancy.

Watching the Aurors scramble to follow through with what she demanded, Trinh could even feel impressed by her own supposed power as she knew they only reacted so quickly because of how afraid of her mother everyone was. Trinh's unborn child would be an heir of Phuong Itawa and there were very few alive who felt no fear of that name.

Trinh looked down at the small bulge in her stomach, whispering to the unborn life within her, "Tomorrow is Christmas, _tình yêu nhỏ_. My first Christmas here and your very last, I will assume, when my mother plucks you from this miserable place. For once, though, I agree with her. Azkaban is no place for children and certainly not for my little child." She settled onto the cold bed. "But no matter what, you must keep your resilience, your spirit, and never let my mother take you over, though she certainly will try. It's what she does best after all. It's the only reason she had me or any of my siblings—she was not meant to be a mother, though many might argue that I am not meant to be one either. Memories of my love, of my son, all erased from me and I didn't even realise any of it whilst looking right into his face. What sort of mother doesn't recognise her own child's face? But I will remember you."

There was a sound, inaudible to anyone else who might have been listening in, because it was only for Trinh to hear and to understand. She smirked when the message flooded through her and then looked back down to her stomach.

"Did you feel that, little one? Did you hear it? Roxy Weasley has finally chosen—she's finally made the decision to run away from her enemies and to hide amongst strangers who don't know her or what she has done. We've removed an enemy, though a weak one at best she may be. Perhaps the prophecies upon which my mother has been relying are not so accurate if one of the principle pieces has chosen to flee instead."

Her mother was a fool, though, Trinh knew that even if she would never admit it to her mother's face. But some day, through the child within her, Phuong Itawa would fall and Trinh would have power and freedom, while her mother would be left with absolutely nothing.

"Some day," she whispered, still smirking. "Some day, you shall be heir to the world, a prince or princess to a world where all shall fear you and bow down to you in awe of all the power that you have. And I, in my proper place, will rule this pathetic rock full of idiots who don't yet understand my true purpose and strength—but they shall by the time I am finished with them."

Down the hall, another prisoner began to scream and there was the sound of plastic hitting the stone walls. A few seconds later, several Aurors rushed by, wands drawn.

Yes, they would understand her soon enough and come to fear her. She may have been locked away in this miserable hell hole but Trinh had no intention of dying here. If anything, she would ensure that her mother's final days would be spent in the darkness of Azkaban—perhaps even in the same cell that Trinh was trapped in now.

But for that moment, she could only wait and pretend that she was defeated. Her enemies might thing her broken, but the end was near enough for all of them. Especially her mother.


	72. Leaving it (all) behind

Roxy looked around at the emptied remains of her room. Almost everything was packed into her trunk, along with three knapsacks, and whatever else had been left behind was now stuffed into her bin or an overflowing garbage bag. No one could know yet that Roxy would be leaving tonight, taking her belongings and heading out to the muggle world where she could live in peace.

Dawn had assisted her in getting Roxy's life savings converted into muggle notes, pieces of paper with little numbers in the corner that hardly made any sense. She had also directed Roxy to a muggle town where no known wizards had lived in over a century, making it very unlikely that Roxy would run into anyone who knew where she was.

But other than her distant cousin, everyone had been intentionally left in the dark about her plans to avoid having to deal with the endless questions or arguments about why she shouldn't—couldn't—leave. Roxy intended on pulling a Dominique, disappearing in the dead of night when no one else was around, though hopefully, her body would not wash up in the Thames in two months' time. Roxy intended on living peacefully amongst the muggles.

Until then, though, she would do her best to enjoy her final moments amongst friends and watch as 2029 ended, becoming 2030—a year, she hoped, of new beginnings, the new year rung in with eager shouting and running around looking for someone to kiss and celebrate with, although the fact now stood that Roxy was really the only one of all her friends who was currently single, so the running around for someone to kiss might become a little less tongue in cheek fun and more desperation to not look like she was all alone as the clocks struck midnight.

There was a sound from elsewhere in the flat, making Roxy jump and move swiftly to the door to ensure that no one was about to peek into her room and discover that everything had been packed away. Jo and Aniya might have become more relaxed than was acceptable, but they would still notice that something was up if they were to look into her almost entirely empty room, and she was _not_ going to let such an easily preventable mistake overtake her before she'd even set out.

She sighed, sinking onto her stripped bed, and put her head in her hands, thinking of how her life had gotten so bad that this was where she was now at only twenty years of age. Hadn't it been not that long ago that Roxy was graduating from Hogwarts, her life full of potential and promise? And what did she have now?

"Hey, Rox? Are you coming to Itterman's party or do you intend on sulking in your bedroom for the rest of the year? Because I'm pretty sure the rules of best friendhood requires that I drag you out of there and make you have fun."

Jo sounded like she was right outside the door, and Roxy had no doubt that she would just barge in without asking, so she jumped to her feet and rushed out of the room with her bag, giving Jo a smile as she quickly slammed the door shut behind her.

"You okay there, Rox? I was mostly kidding about dragging you out to the party if you don't want to go. I mean, it won't be _that_ fun, since we all have dates and you don't—er, well, I...you _don't_ have a date, though, there's no point in sugar-coating it." Jo scrunched up her face in thought. "I heard Jason Rivers will be there, or Walker Zabini, I know you used to have a crush on him. I could owl him and ask if he needs a pretty girl on his arm for the night, what do you think?"

Roxy shook her head. "I don't need you to set me up with anyone, Jo. Not all of those ridiculous traditions need to be followed—I didn't have anyone to kiss last year and I'm still doing fine, aren't I? It's honestly not that big of a deal."

Her best friend eyed her warily. "I think you and I have different definitions of what 'doing fine' means." At Roxy's annoyed glance, the taller girl shrugged. "You don't eat or sleep. At your gran's house, you spent almost the whole Christmas holidays sitting in a corner by yourself, not talking to anyone. So excuse me for being worried that you aren't taking care of your health."

"Let's just go get Aniya and head out before I give up on our friendship entirely." Roxy rolled her eyes but smiled at Jo. "No more talk about my health until it's 2030, do you understand me? Mention it even once and I'll head straight back home without another word."

"If you insist." Jo headed down to where Aniya's room was and began banging on her door. "Come on, Aniya, get your butt out here so we can go! However you look now is good enough—you're taken anyway, so who cares if you look pretty?"

Despite her annoyance at her friend's insistent badgering about her health, Roxy couldn't help but laugh at Jo's antics, pushing all of her problems out of her mind if only temporarily. Perhaps she could truly have fun tonight, on her last night.

Perhaps Roxy could actually have some fun for once.

* * *

Almost immediately after arriving at the party—which was already in full swing—Aniya found Desmond in the crowd and ran off with him, claiming that the two were going to look for drinks, although their dopey smiles and giggling suggested otherwise. Gage Wedgewood, Jo's boyfriend, appeared not long after and invited Jo to dance along to the pounding music. Jo turned back to look at Roxy, who waved her hands at the couple, shooing them off.

She spotted Albus and Scorpus, Lysander and Maisie, Lorcan making out with some girl in a corner. Kieran walked past with Victoria, both of them waving awkwardly at the sight of Roxy all by herself, with no one to talk to.

Although she was surely not the only single person here, it still felt weird knowing that all of her friends had paired off with other people and left her alone, holding a cup of Firewhisky and swaying to a heavy wrock song that she didn't recognise in the slightest.

"So you're all alone, too?" asked Jan, appearing by her side with his own drink and a soggy, half-eaten sandwich. He took a bite out of it and shook his head. "Seems crappy, doesn't it, seeing all of your friends be so happy while you feel jealous because you can't have it too? And then you feel bad for getting jealous, as though it's their fault that you're still single?"

"I chose to be single. _I'm_ the one who broke up with Kieran more than a year ago and _I'm_ the one who decided I wasn't interested in chasing after some guy for the time being, not until I know where I want to be in my life, what with everything that's happened."

"But you're still jealous, at least a little, yeah?" Jan raised his eyebrows at her. "Every time you see Kieran with her, your blood pumps just a little fast and your face starts to darken as you think to yourself that you made a mistake in letting him get away."

"Don't push your personal feelings and problems onto me, Jan. I'm not jealous of Victoria because I don't _care._ Kieran is my friend, nothing more, and we really are both better off this way. Just because you're obsessed with Maisie and missed your chance to be with her doesn't mean we're all just as romantically torn up on the inside as you are. I'm not pathetic."

He frowned in a way that made Roxy immediately regret her choice of words. She tried to apologise, to explain that wasn't what she meant, but he held up his hands and shrugged, though the frown remained.

"Heavy, heavy," he told her. "I know I'm not the best person around but you don't have to be so blunt about your opinion of me." She tried to explain again but he cut her off. "It's fine, Roxy. It's not as though you're the first person to call me pathetic. After all, my father did change my name legally when I was five years old—to Jan! I mean, if that doesn't scream pathetic, I don't know what else does. Besides, I know you're lying. Not about me being pathetic, but when you say that you don't care."

"Oh yeah? How do you know?"

"Because I can read you like an open book." He paused. "Well, maybe not an _open_ book, you aren't quite Maisie with your heart on your sleeve, so blatantly obvious about every single emotion, but it also isn't that hard to tell how you're feelings. I only need to talk to you for a few minutes at a time and bam, I know everything there is to know about you."

"Is that so? Why don't you prove it to me, then, if you can read me so well?" He shrugged in response. "You said you can read me like a book, Jan—why is that, if you don't want to share what you know?"

"Are you kidding? Have you looked at me— _no one_ wants to talk to me! And after a while, if you're someone like me, an outcast, you learn to shut up because no one's listening anyway and instead you begin listening to others, to watch them. And now, because of that, I know how nearly everybody works, just by observing them."

"Hm." She smirked at him. "Okay, then, if that's true, then I insist that you read me like the book I supposedly am. Go ahead, Mr Mullins, I won't get upset."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead, I really don't mind. I don't think you'll be _that_ accurate. There's no way you can know that much about me when we've only had a few conversations together in the years since we met."

"Alright." Jan cleared his throat. "Let's see...you're still insecure about your brother's death and your father's suicide. You blame yourself, really, because you're the one who got the owl about his death. You don't feel like you're the favourite child, possibly because you're younger or a girl, possibly because you were born...post-argument, I'm assuming an affair of some kind. You feel like there's a dark mark on your record because you're the only Slytherin in a family that's traditionally very anti-Slytherin. People expect you to act a certain way so you give off the appearance of being cold-hearted when, in reality, all of your friends think you're very kind and helpful. You blame yourself any time something goes wrong and begin to wonder if there's a point to all of this. Why graduate just to be stuck in a job you honestly don't like? Why fight when it only gets people killed—although you know deep down you aren't responsible for their deaths because they made the choice to fight. Why punish just Itawa when there are still enemies out there? Every time you take a step forward, you _feel_ like you're taking two steps back. You try to convince yourself that it's all in your head and you're overreacting, and the truth is, you kind of are, but at the same time you really aren't. In fact, you intend on leaving after this party to disappear."

She scoffed. "How could you possibly know that?"

"I can read your body language, Roxy, the way you're distancing yourself from everyone and only talking to me. You aren't drinking, dancing, talking or even looking for someone to make out with later on—because you want them to get used to life without you, so you've already begun to pull away. Because very soon, you _aren't_ going to be here any more."

"Are you sure your sister was the only super powered member of your family?" Roxy tried to joke, though she could only manage a weak chuckle.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure, last time I checked I'm just good at reading people. I'm not amazing or supernatural—just Jan, the awkward guy in the background, that's all."

"Listen, I'm sorry for calling you pathetic—"

"No, it's fine, it's not important. Besides, this is a reminder that I'm not very impactful or noticeable. I'm not the hero in the story, though I never expected to be, so I guess I'm right on track with where I should be in my life."

"But you are a hero, though, in your own way."

"How so?"

"You spoke up during the trial, didn't you?"

"Roxy, they almost threw my admission out of court for not pertaining to the case and for being too emotionally laden. I cried! Not very heroic, if you ask me."

"But you still spoke up, still put yourself in danger trying to find your sister before you knew she was dead and then helped to get one of her killers imprisoned. Doesn't that sound heroic to you?" He nodded uncertainly. "Sure it does, even if in a small way. And isn't that the best way to be heroic, in small ways? To be honest, being a hero in a big way, like my uncle, is never as great an idea as it seems, if you ask me. It only seems to result in that much more people dying."

"Are you still planning on leaving?" he asked, doing his best to swipe at the teens in his eyes, hoping Roxy didn't notice the wetness—which she did, but tactfully chose to ignore.

"If you can read me so well, you should already know the answer to that question, Jan. I don't have a choice, not when the alternative is continuing to stay here and get more and more sick because I'm driving myself crazy, obsessing over everything that's gone wrong with my life. I'm better off moving on, to become healthier again."

Jan looked down at his drink and sighed. "You ought to say good-bye, at least. I think you owe them that much, wouldn't you agree? They're your friends, are you truly going to just leave them all behind without at least saying a final good-bye?"

"But they'll know," replied Roxy, nodding in the direction of Maisie, who was waving at them. "I wouldn't just say good-bye if all that I was doing was going back to my flat for the night. I don't want them to know, I don't want them to suspect that I'm running away before I actually head out. They'll only try to stop me, to keep me here, stuck in the exact same rut as always."

The boy gave her an unimpressed look but did not argue. He understood, in part, the desire to run away from everything and everyone. "But still, good-byes are deserved, so…I'll say them for you, okay? I can be the one to tell Aniya and Joanna that you said you'll miss them."

"I can't tell you where I'm going, in case they try to drag it out of you. Only one other person knows where I'll be, not necessarily because I trust them the most, but because I know that it would never occur to anyone that _they_ are the person that I told my secret to. So I can't, and won't, let you know where I'm going, but...thank you for your help. Thank you for saying good-bye."

He blinked, realising what Roxy was telling him, that she would not be waiting until the clock struck midnight to head out. "You're leaving now? But—but it's...the party has barely even started, it's only nine in the evening, why are you leaving so soon? How am I supposed to hold everyone off for so long?"

Roxy shrugged. "If they don't ask, then don't say anything. If they _do_ ask, tell them I'm somewhere else in the party or something like that, I don't care. I still have some things I need to do before I head off for good but not a whole lot of time to do it, so I'd be best to leave now."

She patted him on the shoulder and finished her drink before heading past him, slipping through the crowd of party-goers and out the door. Behind her, Jan looked down at his drink once more, brow furrowed, before going to search for Maisie. He would need to be pretty drunk to deal with the rest of the night.

* * *

She looked around the ward, taking in the sight of the various patient who wandered past her, a few mumbling or letting out low, incoherent moans, though none of them appeared to notice that she was even standing in the door frame. There were both men and women of a variety of ages, ranging from mid-teens to seventy years old. All of them, though, had the same confused, abandoned expression on their face, as each patient in this particular ward suffered from permanent mental spell damage that had left them trapped in their own befuddled minds.

Sitting calmly on her bed, legs crossed and hands resting on her knees, Lindsey did not react when Roxy approached her. Like everyone else in the ward, Lindsey was imprisoned within the confines of her own mind and probably didn't even recognise Roxy any more.

The assistant Healer who had let Roxy in warned her that it was very unlikely that Lindsey would be able to speak or walk and that Roxy would be smart to have patience when trying to communicate with the blonde.

"Hello, Lindsey," she said quietly, sitting down in a chair that she dragged from the corner of the room. "You probably don't remember who I am, but my name is Roxy Weasley. We fought together a few months ago and, unfortunately, you didn't come out of it very well. I...I talked to someone recently and they told me that I've harboured a sensation of guilt for what happened to you and the other victims of the battle. And he has a point, I know he does, because I've felt like this since I lost my brother, but that doesn't mean that recognising that I have an issue will immediately result in me getting over the whole thing and moving past it. But I could make things at least a little better by apologising, couldn't I? You probably have no clue what I'm even saying, but that's not going to stop me from trying my best to make things better by talking to you about what happened. So here I am, talking to someone who can't answer me."

Lindsey moaned lightly and tapped the end of her dressing gown with her fingers, but gave no indication that she had any idea what Roxy had just said. Instead, she began to rock back and forth, moaning a little bit louder.

"I didn't mean for you to get hurt, Lindsey. I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt or to die, and though I'll definitely try to work through my own personal feelings regarding how much of an impact I really had that led to you being this way, I still feel like I owe you a massive apology for pushing the idea of us going to battle, especially when the outcome was only a fraction of what we truly wanted or deserved. If you...if you only knew how little we've truly accomplished in the last three months, you'd probably feel just as awful as I do. We failed, Lindsey, we truly did, no matter those who might say that locking away Trinh was an accomplishment. She wasn't the only enemy—if anything, she was the weakest of them all, the easiest to take down, but because everyone thinks we've made some kind of substantial progress, they've chosen to sit back and act as though our side has somehow earned a break."

The older female froze and fell silent as though enthralled by the sound of Roxy's voice. Her hands twitched slightly and her eyes blinked rapidly for several seconds and, for a moment, Roxy almost thought that the blonde was actually trying to tell her something, but then Lindsey became calm once more, with a blank smile on her face that was devoid of any intelligence or conscious awareness of the world around her.

Not that far away from where they were sitting, one of the oldest patients—at around seventy to seventy-five years old—toddled in their direction, opening his mouth to reveal a gummy, tooth-deprived hole. He stuck his tongue out, wiggling it around for a second before he shut his mouth and laughed, his chuckle lacking any real amusement. Then, as though nothing had happened at all, the man sunk onto the bed closest to where they were and seemed to fall asleep.

Bemused, Roxy turned back to Lindsey to see that she had also stuck out her tongue, but quickly shut it when Roxy frowned at her. She was so confused—was this some way that the patients communicated with each other or had that simply been a coincidence?

Deciding to pretend that nothing had happened at all, Roxy continued talking to Lindsey. "I'm leaving behind the wizarding world at the end of the night. It's—it's not that I'm leaving behind magic entirely but I honestly have reached a point where I can't be here, in this world, with these people and these problems. I'm mentally exhausted, everyone is always pointing out to me that I'm physically unhealthy, although obviously if you could talk, you'd probably laugh in my face and tell me that I'm overreacting to all of this, but I don't think that I can handle this any more..." Roxy took a deep breath, steeling herself. "Basically, I've come here tonight to receive a form of personal forgiveness because I know you can't forgive me and maybe you wouldn't want to if you could, but I can't leave without talking to you and at least that means I have the sense that I've done something to help me on my path to improving my mental state, even if there's nothing I can do to improve yours."

As she confessed this, Roxy felt that a weight had been lifted from her chest and that she was truly making some sort of progress.

"We weren't close, you and I, I know we weren't, because even after the Circle was created, our social identities never really lined up beyond this one connection, but please know that your sacrifice, whether intentional or not, will never be forgotten or discredited, certainly not by me. I truly wish that nothing had happened to you but because it did, I will do my best to carry on my person mission in your name. Just because I'm leaving the wizarding world doesn't mean that I'm giving up the battle, though, since doing so would be just as bad as forgetting the sacrifices that were made. So I _will_ keep fighting in my own way, don't worry about that. I won't let you down, Lindsey. I promise."

Roxy stood up and hugged the other woman, who squirmed in confusion at being touched—but quickly gave up and slumped against Roxy, whimpering under her breath.

"I'm sorry, Lindsey. I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry for everything that's happened, I'm sorry that you were hurt in this way. I...I have to go now, though, it's time for me to go. Good-bye, Lindsey, good-bye and please forgive me." She headed for the door, brushing away a tear that had begun to roll down her cheek. But she couldn't cry, not here, not now, not when there was still one more thing to do before she left for good. So, with her head held high, Roxy departed from the ward.

"No...please...wait," whispered Lindsey, reaching after the quickly shutting door. "He's still here...he's still here." But Roxy had already left and the mental disorientation quickly consumed her once more. Lindsey was once again trapped in the confines of her own mind, help captive by the Faceless One.

* * *

As Roxy Apparated to the edge of the land owned by the Weasley family, she could hear the clock strike eleven times from the local muggle village, Ottery St Catchpole. Midnight was drawing closer and closer, but she was almost done—this would be her last stop for the night before leaving for good.

The lights of the Burrow were off, the shades drawn; this made sense since her grandparents were eighty now. The appeal of ringing in a new year versus getting some extra sleep was probably not a difficult decision for the couple. New Years' celebrations were meant more for younger people anyway, the sort that enjoyed getting ridiculously drunk.

Roxy wondered if she would be the same way at eighty—assuming, that was, that she ever made it to eighty. It was her personal experience that muggles weren't very well-versed in wizarding diseases and illnesses, so she would be on her own if she ever got sick,

But she wasn't at the Burrow to say hello to her grandparents nor contemplate her own mortality. No, the back corner of the Weasley land to which had Apparated was dedicated to the buried members of the Weasley family, including her uncles, Fred and Charlie, her father, and her brother. There was a fifth grave marker for someone named _Faye_ from 1974, but no one in the family seemed to know who that was and Grandmum Weasley would only ever smile wanly without giving an answer.

She knelt in front of Freddie's marker, running her fingers over the engraving in the stone that read _Frederick Gideon Weasley II; 4 August, 2003 – 9 July, 2023. Fly with the great ones._ Her mum had picked the epitaph that went under his name as a way of attributing how much of an impact Quidditch had on their family and his death specifically, Roxy supposed, though she'd never really felt like it was her place to ask the real meaning.

The snow quickly soaked through the knees of Roxy's jeans but she was too busy looking down at the spot where they had buried her brother. She'd not been here since the day before starting seventh year more than two years ago.

At the time, she'd felt lost, confused, and desperate for someone who could give her answers without judging her actions. It seemed like there was no one left at the Burrow who could do that any more since each Weasley acted like they had the perfect path for Roxy— _none_ of which sounded appealing to her. So, horribly bewildered, Roxy ran from the festivities until she stumbled across Freddie's grave, wherein she broke down sobbing, wondering to herself how it was that her brother had always given off the appearance of being so well put together.

Of course she'd received no answers but being able to just sit by herself for a time without everyone around her asking about post-Hogwarts plans when she didn't have any—just like in the old days, Freddie had made her feel better about herself, even if it was just by sitting next to his grave and crying.

Now, though, she could sense that something was different, a sort of energy and presence that had not existed the last time she was here. Pulling away from the stone slightly, Roxy craned her head to catch a glimpse of a pale light hovering roughly two metres above the ground.

She was tempted to leap up and rush to the light, yelling her brother's name, but the memory of the Faceless One pretending to be Freddie still stung in the back of her thoughts and she was not willing to get her hopes up so easily again.

"What are you?" she demanded of the light. "I don't know your intentions here but if they aren't friendly then I'll...I'll..."

"You'll what?" asked James Potter, circling from behind her, his footsteps making no sound since his feet were non-corporeal and could not touch the ground. "You'll yell 'boo' at me?" He laughed at Roxy's shocked expression. "Come now, my dear, you act as though you'd never seen a ghost before. Surely you're happy to see me?"  
"Uh..." Roxy stammered, glancing between the ghost and the light in bewilderment. What was going on? "It's not that I, uh, that I'm not happy to see you, but, uh, why exactly are you here? And what is that thing supposed to be?" She nodded at the light, which flashed brightly for a second before returning to a duller blue.

"Don't you recognise your own brother?" the ghost replied, raising an eyebrow at her. "I know he looks a little different but it's a bit difficult to change the spirit, I should think." The light flashed again, making James chuckle and shake his head. "Yes, Freddie, I am aware that Roxy mistook Khiro for you but that's very different. He's had a long time to master mimicking and dampening the spirit of others. I have no doubt the daemon could fool just about anyone."

The light flashed again and Roxy gaped at it, wondering if the light was truly what remained of her brother or if perhaps these ghostly figures were just another trick of the Faceless One, his latest attempt to mess with her mind before Roxy departed for good. How was she to know if they could be trusted?

"Prove it," she told James Potter, frowning. "Prove that you are who you say you are. If the Faceless One can appear to be anyone he wants to be then how do I know that you two aren't him? _Prove_ that you're James Potter and that he's my brother."

The ghost turned slightly to face the light, which flashed rapidly; he shrugged at it. "The young lady has asked for proof. I think we owe her that much." The light flashed again and James nodded. "Remember the message I gave you from Freddie a little while ago?" he asked Roxy. "The one I told you to keep to yourself?"

She furrowed her brow in confusion. "You mean the thing about the fact that my time here is done until I get a sign to come back? The message where you essentially repeated the same prophecy that I've already heard like a dozen times? The message where you warned me about the loss of a ruby without explaining what that meant? _That_ message?"

"Yes, yes, _that_ message, don't act as though you don't remember it." But he was still smiling, making it clear that he was trying to be funny even though Roxy didn't understand the joke. "Freddie here wanted me to tell you at the time about the other child mentioned in the prophecy, the 'little ruler', though I believe that telling you won't actually do anything to change the future. Instead, I gave you a warning about the dangers of mirrored rubies."

"Yes, and I told you that vague statements like that never make any sense and only serve to drive people crazy."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I can only tell you so much without messing up the timeline, not that I really even have the power to change the timeline in such a monumental way. Giving you the book shook things up as much as I'm capable of doing so. But that's not the point—we're the only ones who know the content of that message so I should think that's enough to prove our identities, don't you agree?"

"I suppose so," she replied, doing her best to refrain from lunging at the light and hugging it as tightly as possible; after all, if Freddie was made out of light, it was very unlikely that she'd be able to touch him at all. "But why are you here? You never did actually answer that question."

James Potter glanced back to look at the gleaming little sun. "You're leaving tonight, aren't you?" he asked, making Roxy groan. She'd thought she kept her secret fairly well. "Sorry, part of being a ghost means spending time spying on your loved ones. But Freddie and I decided that, instead of letting you talk to a lifeless stone hiding an even more lifeless body in your final moments of the wizarding world, we could come here in person escort you to your new home."

"What? I'm just going to Apparate over to the station at midnight and catch a ride. You don't need to follow me over there or anything, I'm fine on my own."

"Freddie tells me that you were a Beater during your time at Hogwarts. Would I be wrong in assuming, then, that you enjoy flying as much as the rest of your family? Or did you just play as a Beater as a way to relieve pent up frustration and stress? that's how Sirius always was back in school—he never cared about flying."

"Um..." Roxy was baffled by this sudden change in topic. What did her interest in flying have to do with her going to live with muggles? It wasn't as though she'd be able to bring a broom with her or that there'd be anyone around for a casual pick-up match of Quidditch.

"It's a simple question, Roxy. Do you like to fly?" When she did not immediately reply—still baffled by the strange question—the ghost sighed good-naturedly. "I'm going to assume the answer is yes. No rational person would play Beater position if they didn't like flying at least a little bit, and that's being generous about the rational nature of Beaters as a whole." He smiled, moving to stand next to Roxy, who looked up at him in absolute bewilderment. "Now you're going to want to hold on tightly since this isn't like flying a broom."

"What—" But before she could get the question out, James Potter had grabbed her by the wrist and they were airborne. She screamed as the Burrow became a distant spot beneath her feet, the trees turning into toy versions of themselves. The muggle village was awash with vibrant light but she couldn't make out any individual glimmer. The whole place was just one large white-yellow blob that didn't make sense to her brain.

James Potter looked behind him to see if Roxy was okay, a huge grin on his face. "Well? What do you think, huh? No broom required or anything—all you need is a good old-fashioned ghost friend. And we're far more inconspicuous this way since there's no trail of magic or ticket sale to track where you're going."

She opened her mouth to respond but the sound was swallowed up by the air rushing past her face, pushing the words back down and leaving Roxy capable only of weakly shutting her mouth once more, wondering what she'd been dragged into.

"Oh, right, too much wind up here for you." He shook his head. "I forgot how feeble mortals can be sometimes. But no matter, we can travel this way all the same, even if you can't speak to me. Come on, Freddie, we don't have all the time in the world so we better move quickly."

With that, they kept moving forward, much faster than Roxy was anticipating. It took everything she had to hold onto James Potter's hand as they rushed past trees, fields, and towns. The wind, cold and icy, bit at her face and arms, so Roxy mentally cast a warming spell, nearly forgetting to keep hold of the ghost. Thankfully, before she could slip, she was smart enough to re-grip his hand and hold it tightly, wondering how quickly they were speeding past everything. It was not so much that she couldn't make out the scenery beneath her but that by the time her brain processed what she was actually looking at, they had already rushed past it.

A thought occurred to her—that James Potter could be taking her anywhere and she would have no way of stopping him until it was too late and they were already there. After all, he couldn't hear anything she might try to say and there was no way of guaranteeing that he had any idea where her actual destination was.

However, she could say nothing in protest and letting go of his hand right then was not a very intelligent thing to do, so instead Roxy continued to hold tight and hope that she could trust James Potter to not just abandon her in an empty field in the middle of nowhere.

"You doing alright back there?" called the ghost, craning his head to look behind him, which made Roxy nervous that they would run into something even though there was nothing in the sky with them. "Hey, Freddie, how're we doing on schedule, huh?" The light flashed rapidly. "Yeah, but it's kind of difficult to keep track of where I'm going and how long we've been moving." The light flashed again. "Okay, okay. You didn't need to swear at me."

They passed over another small town before James suddenly swooped low to the ground so that they were skimming over a lake that had long since become a frozen mirror. Roxy might have been able to admire the view if her heart weren't still absolutely pounding from the unexpected drop and instead she began to cough silently, her chest heaving with noiseless motion.

He glanced at her again. "Oh, sorry, forgot to warn you about that, my bad. Don't worry, I won't do that again, I swear. Besides that, we're pretty much at your destination now anyway, so no real harm done, right?"

The lowered altitude suddenly kicked in and, amongst racking coughs, Roxy managed to choke out, "Are you trying to bloody kill me as well? Where in the name of Merlin are we? Where've you taken me?" Her head begun to hurt from the pressure of moving so quickly.

"Don't you remember? After all, you're the one who chose to come here." They came to a stop in front of a sign that read _Chipping Campden, population: 2,817_. "Well?" James asked, raising his eyebrows at her. "Isn't this the place? I got you here safe and sound, if maybe a little off schedule from what we wanted."

"Off schedule?" She looked around at the quiet village located just down the street. It was dark still and off in the distance, she heard a clock strike midnight. "I'd say that, if anything, you got me ahead of schedule! it's only just now midnight—I wasn't expecting to get to Chipping Campden until tomorrow morning at best. You've done a wonderful job getting me here."

James Potter looked to the light that was Roxy's brother, a strange smile on his face as the light blinked, conveying some sort of message. Then, once more without warning, he reached for her hand and they soared above the trees. "She'll find out soon enough," he told Freddie, still with that odd smile.

They hovered over the village, Roxy gasping for air and James Potter laughing his head off while the light flickered repeatedly, frustrated that it wasn't being acknowledged by the one person who could understand it.

"This is the last time either of us will be able to communicate with you for a long while, unfortunately." James gave her a sharp look, though the grin remained plastered on his face. "Freddie says he'll miss you dearly, as will I of course, and we'll both be looking forward to seeing you again some day when you've decided that living like a muggle isn't all that it's chalked up to be. For now, though, I think it's time we took are leave, don't you, Freddie?" The light blinked. "Well, Miss Weasley, I hope you enjoy your drop into Chipping Campden."

"Wait, what do you mean—"

With that, he let go of her hand and Roxy fell to the ground below, screaming as the dark snow came up to meet her.


	73. Is this the end?

When she woke the next morning, it was to the bright sunlight gleaming in her eyes and a man that she had never seen before standing over her, a worried expression on his face. He jumped back upon coming to the realisation that she was awake, giving Roxy a wary smile.

He had thick blond hair and brown eyes, with a light tan that usually went hand in hand with years of working outside. He was roughly her age, if not a little older, Roxy guessed, squinting up at the male standing over her.

"Are you okay, miss?" he asked, reaching out a hand to help Roxy to her feet. "I'd think it's a bit too cold to be sleeping outside like this, though obviously, I'm in no real position to judge what to do. Although I must say that your lips are looking quite blue, so you may do some good indoors, if you don't mind my saying, Miss..." He stared at Roxy expectantly, waiting for a name.

Obviously, she couldn't tell him her actual name, in the off-chance that a wizard would happen to come into the town and learn that Roxy was here, especially since she intended on making the muggle town her permanent residence. No, she'd have to come up with a fake name of some kind.

"I'm, er...Raegan," she stammered unconvincingly. "Raegan Willis. A friend of mine named Dawn helped me to purchase some land out here, though I'm not exactly sure where it is. I don't even have any of my belongings."

He narrowed his eyes, pointing behind her to the patch of snow where she'd been laying. "Is that not your stuff, then?" When Roxy spun around to look at her trunk and rucksack, he cocked his head in confusion. "Well, Miss Willis, my name is Tristan Atherton. I've been a resident of Chipping Campden all my life, as has my whole family going back nine generations."

"Oh." She wondered if his statement was meant to impress her. "Um, if you don't mind my asking, in what direction is your, I guess, town square? I'll probably be able to locate the estate agent from there so I can start setting up my living space."

He nodded, lifting his arm just before something occurred to him. "Actually, I can do you one better, Miss Willis. I can escort you straight to the estate agent's office with nary a bit of fuss, what d'you say about that, hm?"

"No, no, that's not necessary, really, I just need the directions, I can find their office myself, I really can, I don't need an escort." Perhaps it was growing up in the streets of Diagon Alley with parents who were constantly paranoid about her being snatched away by a stranger, but Roxy had what she considered to be a healthy dose of wariness towards strangers. She wasn't going to just walk off with some guy she'd just met.

"Don't worry about it, I don't have any problems at all about making sure that a lovely young woman such as yourself is brought back to town safely. Besides, my mam is the only estate agent in town, so being seen with her favourite son probably won't hurt your chances of ensuring that all of your paperwork is in order." He winked at her then, chuckling, grabbed Roxy's luggage from the snow and jerked his head towards the path. "Now come on, Miss Willis. it's not a long walk but you _do_ look awfully cold."

* * *

A bell tinkled merrily as the door to Atherton Estates opened. The secretary, a twenty-something named Catie looked up, smiling as she spotted the younger son of her employer. A small girl trailed behind him, her curls bogged down by snow, her face weighed with a heavy frown.

"Hello, Tristan, how are you today?" Catie asked cheerfully. "I think your mam is in a meeting right now but I can ring her right away if you'd like me to." Her finger was already on the button for the intercom, her other hand outstretched for the keypad.

"No, that's fine, Catie, I wouldn't want to interrupt anything. Besides, you don't mind waiting, do you?" He turned to the girl, who shrugged non-committally. "This is Miss Raegan Willis," he explained to Catie. "Apparently she's set up a home here in Chipping and needs to finish going through all the paperwork so she can move in."

Catie gave the girl a wary glance. She certainly didn't look old enough yet to purchase property, especially given the state of her worn clothing and battered luggage, of which there was little. But she also knew it wasn't polite to say anything rude to people she didn't know, so instead, Catie put on her best secretary's smile.

"Of course, Tristan," she replied sweetly, then focused her attention on the girl. "Willis, is it? What kind of property were you looking to rent? We have very nice flat blocks not that far from the centre of town that I think you'd—"

"Actually I'm _purchasing_ , not renting, and it's already been paid for in full, a little house just outside outside of town." The girl smirked slightly, making Catie bristle. "All I really need is to fill out the last of the registration papers and collect the keys so I can be out of your hair and on my way. I've got quite a bit of unpacking to do." She indicated her solitary trunk, missing the twin expressions of confusion on Tristan and Catie's faces.

Something clicked in Catie's head as she ran through all of the properties sold in the past month. "Oh, are you talking about the old McCreevey cottage? I'm sorry, didn't Mrs Atherton call you about that? That place is still under construction, it won't be fit to live in for at least another month, possibly two at the latest."

"What?" Raegan's hands balled into fists just then and she might have even taken a swing at Catie if the office door hadn't opened just then, revealing a thin, fifty-something blonde woman who glanced around at the three before her gaze finally settled on Tristan.

"Tristan, dear, what's going on? Is everything alright?" Her eyes flickered to Raegan, who wore a stormy expression and had clearly clenched fists hanging by her sides. "Oh dear, hello, who are you? Tristan, darling, is this a friend of yours from school?"

He shook his head. "This is Raegan Willis. She purchased a home not too long ago, but Catie's told us that the home in question won't be good to live in for another month." Tristan frowned at his mother. "Mam, why would you sell someone a house that's no good? You know that isn't right to do."

The woman shook her head, mildly embarrassed. "I hired the wrong guy to do inspections, I know I did. I've been using the same inspector for years, but I thought, oh, Mr Schexnayd is getting on a bit in age, perhaps I ought to hire someone younger this time." Her cheeks tinged pink as she once more shook her head. "But I will certainly make it up to you, dear, don't you worry. My eldest has moved out so we've got a spare room for the time being, I absolutely wouldn't mind at all just setting that up for you to stay in while your home gets fixed."

Raegan Willis opened her mouth to protest, but she was cut off by Tristan. "It' a really nice place and we're all good people. My sister, Gemma, she works at this lovely restaurant not too far from here, she could get you a job there if you want or need a source of income. Not to mention that my dad is a fantastic cook, one of the best you'll ever meet."

She looked between mother and son, seeing the way they were eagerly striving to correct things and make sure that she was happy. It was also clear that they would not relax or let down until she agreed to stay with them for the next month.

"Very well," conceded the girl in a quite voice.

"Good, good, then it's all settled." Mrs Atherton clapped her hands together, pleased. "Tristan, if you don't mind, could you please escort Miss Willis to our home and help her move in properly? If Rupert is home, just explain to him that she'll be staying with us until her home can be repaired; he'll understand, he knows how I am about helping others and making things right once more."

Tristan nodded, then turned to Raegan. "Come on then, Miss Willis. We live not to far from here, just a ten minute walk, but I'm sure you'd rather not stay out too long in the cold if you don't have to. Besides, you can meet my sisters. they'll get a kick out of having another girl in the house, especially one as pretty as you are. Don't be surprised if they start making you up and post pictured onto the internet with twenty different filters and hashtags."

Watching them leave—and noticing the way that Tristan and Raegan were looking at each other—Catie decided she'd give her little sister a phone call after Mrs Atherton returned to her office. After all, though Tristan _seemed_ like a nice enough boy, there was no way of telling how far from the tree that the apple could have potentially fallen. It was better to be safe now than sorry twenty years down the road in marriage.

* * *

Roxy was very self-conscious of how she appeared to Tristan; for one thing, the boy's speech was peppered with words she didn't understand, like _selfie_ or _retweet_. What was social media even supposed to be?

The idea of staying with strangers, especially muggles, made her uneasy, though she knew she'd have to get past that soon if she wanted to live amongst muggles for the rest of her life.

They were walking through what Tristan called the centre square of Chipping Campden—"our downtown as it were," he told her, chuckling at his own joke. Nearly every building they passed was decades or possibly even centuries older than her grandparents. There were flowerbeds outside of every shop, but hardly any flowers, as it was too cold to bother trying to grow anything.

Tristan pointed at a small local bakery—Angel's Bites—and ushered Roxy to follow after him, insisting that the short detour was totally worth it in exchange for some of the best breakfast pastries she would ever have. He called her Miss Willis once more and she almost forgot to answer, having momentarily disregarded the name by which she was now going. Thankfully, Tristan was too enraptured by the prospect of fried dough to notice her lapse in attention or her temporary failure to reply to his statement.

Inside, her gaze happened to fall onto that day's newspaper and Roxy gasped in surprise. It was not the first of January like she'd thought, but rather the fifth. Somehow between James Potter taking her away from the Burrow and Tristan finding her in the snow, she had lost five days, with no idea how that could have possibly happened. Had he charmed her to fall asleep the whole time or had the experience of flying just tired her out so much that she didn't even notice the passage of time? Though, after so long without food or water, shouldn't she fell at least a bit peckish rather than as though she were still digesting her meal from Mia's party?

"Excuse me," she said, turning to Tristan, furrowing her brow. "When you found me earlier this morning, in that little patch of woods? How often would you say that you walk out that way? It's a bit of a distance from the centre of town after all, wouldn't you think?"

He shrugged. "I like the exercise and the solitude of a nice, crisp winter morning. But to answer your question, I go out that way pretty much every chance I get—been out there just about every day this week." His eyes narrowed as he looked at her thoughtfully. "Why do you ask? Considering taking up walking around? I could go with you."

"No thanks, I like my solitude indoors with very little lighting. Though...if you go that path every single time...today is the first time you definitely saw me out there? Never at any point earlier this week, perhaps?"

"Pretty sure I would have noticed someone like you just lying out in the snow like some kind of dozing angel. We haven't had enough snow for you to buried and there isn't a man in town who'd risk his plough to go out that far anyway since hardly anyone drives down to the lake." At her bewildered expression, he raised his eyebrows. "Do you regularly go off on a bender wild enough to forget a whole week? 'Cause my mam isn't big on alcohol or spirits of any kind so you won't find much of the sort at our house nor'd she take too kindly to catching you with alcohol on your person. She doesn't approve of underage drinking."

She blinked, now wholly confused, both by the situation and by Tristan's comment about her age. What was the muggle drinking age if she wasn't old enough to match it? Surely it couldn't be that much older? "Er...you know that I'm twenty, right?" At his shocked and rather ashamed look, Roxy had to chuckle. "How old did you think I was?"

"My age—seventeen." He at least had the decency to hang his head in shame, albeit somewhat mockingly. "Though in my defence, Catie clearly thought you were even younger, like fifteen or fourteen. that's why she was being rather standoffish in the office, because she thought you were some kid lying about your age to cause trouble. I promise she's not like that _all_ of the time."

"If you say so," replied Roxy, though she still didn't much care for Catie. "Are you going to take me to your house now or are we just going to stand here and wait for it to stop being cold outside?"

"Yeah, yeah," he replied, bagged pastries in his hand. He waved the other one breezily. "It's just this way, come on, not too much farther. Maybe later, we could stop by to see the house you bought, to see how it's coming along. But I do think you'll like living with us for the time being. We're all really close—the whole town is really close, you know. Very open, friendly, trusting."

"How many siblings do you actually have?" asked Roxy, curious. "I just have an older brother, Fre—er, Frankie. He's quite a bit older than me but we were quite close as children. Oh, and I have a little sister named...uh, Chelsea. What about you?"

He furrowed his brow, thinking. "Well, I've got a brother named Julian who's married and has two daughters. Then I've got two sisters named Imogen and Gemma, as well as a younger brother named Sebastian. We're all fairly close in age anyway—Jules is twenty-three and Seb is fifteen—so it's always been easy to be friendly." His expression soured somewhat. "There's also my dad's other kids, the ones we don't really talk to that much."

"Why not?"

He shrugged, still wearing that sour face. "Angus and Claire are from Dad's first marriage, back before he met Mam. They're a bit older and also our mam and theirs don't exactly get along. But then there's his mistress." Tristan nodded at her shock, now gazing at her solemnly. "Markus, Nora, and Charlotte—they've all got the same mam, some lady my dad went to school with that he never got over even though they both knew they weren't good for each other. Mam threatened to divorce him after Markus, though to be honest, divorce still isn't really a thing in Chipping Campden, despite the year. After Nora and Charlotte...my parents love each other but there's no affection and they don't sleep in the same room any more—and haven't done so for most of my life."

"Oh." Roxy thought about how, last Christmas, she had discovered the pseudo-affair between her father and Anne, the woman who had essentially run Weasley's Wizard Wheezes for the past decade without any input form the actual Weasley family.

Tristan stuffed his hands into his pockets and shrugged once more. "No one's perfect, least of all my dad. He's a twat but Mam's forgiven her in her own way so I figure that I'd be smart to forgive him as best as I can, too. But, in the case of his other kids, we've just never gotten close to them due to the nature of our backgrounds."

They had come upon an older house with plenty of large windows and heavy curtains. A little sign reading 'yard of the month' was stuck in the grass and Roxy could understand why, with the hedges twisted together in an intricate pattern and brightly coloured roses at every available spot despite the cold. In the centre of it all was an expensive-looking cobblestone path leading up to the front door. The mailbox read _Atherton._

She had seen Malfoy Manor once in her life, while visiting Scorpius and Petra over the summer holidays a few years back. The Atherton house as like the Malfoy's, with all of the flair and prestigious grandiose, but most likely only half the budget to work with. It could be considered the Malfoy Manor for the small town, she supposed.

"My sister is going to be moving out soon as well," said Tristan as he led her into the house, passing a water fountain resting against the wall that was only a little shorter than Roxy herself. "She's marrying this guy named Nigel later this month—good guy, Nigel—and they're shopping around for a home right now. Hopefully one that's already finished by the time they sign for it."

"And your brother is married already?" Roxy asked, trying to recall the mass of information he had dumped on her a few minutes ago. "How long has he been married for? I'm assuming it'll be his old room I'm staying in."

Tristan nodded. "Jules has been married for five years this February. My nieces, Verity and Cecily, are three years and four months old, respectively. They live not to far away from here, so you'll probably see him and his family at dinner over the next month. Mam likes us all to be together as much as possible. I think she'd have a conniption if any of us ever moved out of Campden; she'd hate to lose any of her little angels."

Roxy considered her own mother, who had seemed almost eager to see Roxy get a job and start her own life away from the joke shop. There had never been a sense that her mother would be particularly heartbroken if Roxy moved across the country.

"Anyway," said Tristan, smiling politely at her. "Why don't I show you the room you'll be staying in before I give you the full tour?"

* * *

After a week of living with the Athertons, Roxy felt highly conflicted; while the house and Mr and Mrs Atherton put her off to varying degrees, she liked socialising with Gemma and Tristan.

There was also a lot of time that had been dedicated to Imogen Atherton—the older daughter—and her quickly approaching wedding. Mrs Atherton insisted on dragging Gemma and Roxy along as she checked on orders for flowers, place sets, cake, music, and just about everything else that went into a muggle wedding. Roxy learned that Imogen and her fiancée, Nigel Hitchough, were getting married at the local church, which was apparently a common practise. She though the whole idea was very strange and agreed with Gemma that everyone was far too stressed out about a silly ceremony.

The youngest of the Atherton children—fifteen year old Sebastian—seemed wary of Roxy, from the way he practically refused to address her to how he'd stumble and fall quiet any time that she spoke to him. It was almost comical and Gemma was insistent that his bizarre behaviour was merely because of a crush and that the silliness would stop once he became used to her.

Every now and then, during the times when Mrs Atherton and Imogen weren't home, Roxy would catch Mr Atherton at the back door, speaking in low voices to a middle-aged Asian woman or occasionally a man not much older than Roxy.

"That's Annette and Markus," explained Gemma after the first time Roxy mentioned it to her. "Dad's mistress and one of their kids. Dad feels bad about the whole thing but he'd never divorce Mam so instead he slips them money or food whenever he can." She shrugged, not bothered by her father's not so secret family. "I don't know _how_ they've got the money for it, but apparently the middle one's going to a private boarding school in Scotland."

This made Roxy freeze as she wondered if Mr Atherton had produced witches and wizard with his mistress—was _she_ a witch, too? And how should Roxy respond to that, knowing that she might not be the only magical being in Chipping Campden? What if they knew who she was and unravelled her whole story?

But outside of those brief rendezvous at the back door, Roxy never saw any of Mr Atherton's other family, so she assumed that she was relatively safe from being found out. Besides, she'd never really appeared in _that_ many newspapers over the years, so how likely was it that they would even recognise her, assuming that they were magic to begin with? Perhaps she was simply overreacting and the boarding school in Scotland was just that.

By the time that her second week in town began, Roxy finally noticed that she hadn't thought about Star kid or the Awaits even once while here. Already her life was improving; she was eating more, sleeping better, laughing regularly. Ghosts didn't drag her out of bed to tell her about the newest conspiracy and no one else around her even _believed_ in spirits or daemons or anything of that sort. She was finally free.

Gemma helped to get Roxy an interview at a local restaurant—The Garden Room—and then clapped wildly once the phone call came that she had gotten the job. A naturally upbeat person, Gemma was greatly enthused to know that her newest friend would now be working with her all the time.

All in all, life had already begun to greatly improve since moving away form the wizarding world. Roxy had tucked her wand away three days ago and hardly even thought about it. By the time her house was ready, she was certain that she would be just as casual about the muggle world as everyone else in Chipping Campden.

And then she met _him._

* * *

"Oh don't look now," Gemma called as the door opened, setting off the bell as usual. It was four o'clock on a Monday and they were going through a post-tea time, pre-supper lull.

The man she had seen standing at the Atherton's back door was not waiting at the front of the restaurant. He wasn't particularly tall by normal standards, though Roxy still wouldn't have even reached his shoulder. Scruffy, almost black hair covered his head and ears, though he pushed his bangs out of the way to reveal brown eyes. He looked a bit like a brunet, Asian version of Tristan. Roxy could tell the two were definitely half-brothers, though she might not have guessed it if she didn't know what to look for.

Gemma rushed forward to greet her sibling. "Were you looking for somewhere to sit for lunch? I don't think—oh, fuck it, Mam's not going to know if I talked to you and besides that, I'm an adult now, she can't control everything I say and do."

"Thanks," he replied, awkwardly stuffing his hands into his pockets as he looked from his sister to Roxy. "Hey," he told her, shrugging his shoulders at Roxy as introduction. "I'm Markus Harrow. I'm sure Gem's already told you all about me, but I don't think I've ever seen you around Chipping Campden. What's your name?"

"Er...Raegan...Raegan Willis." Caught off-guard, Roxy had almost forgotten about the fake name she'd given herself. Though she had no intentions of falling in love, even she could not deny that he was quite attractive, and it had caused her to mentally forget where she was for a moment. "I just moved here last week but my house isn't done yet so I'm living with the Athertons until then. You probably haven't seen me because I don't get out a whole lot—mostly work, or, uh, bridal shops for Imogen. I don't go into the centre of town much."

"You aren't missing much," Gemma and Markus said at the same time; she leaned over the counter to high-five her brother.

"Yes, well..." Roxy tilted her head, trying to determine just by looking at him whether or not Markus was a wizard. He was wearing a jumper and jeans with muggle trainers. She could see no hint of a wand, no sign that he was anything other than strictly muggle. Maybe the younger sister was the only witch in the family or maybe she really was just going to a boarding school in Scotland. Markus appeared to be about as magical as toast.

"So are you here to eat or just chat?" asked Gemma, putting her hands on her hips. "We may not look busy now but the supper swamp could begin at any time, so Raegan and I have to be on guard for when that happens, so we can't be distracted by anything or anyone, especially if our manager comes by asking what we're doing."

Her half-brother chuckled and shrugged again. "If you've got any soup and bread, I wouldn't say no. usually The Garden Room is a bit too expensive for me but my pay check just came in and I'm feeling fancy." He winked at Roxy, who, despite her better judgement, giggled as though she were a school girl still. "I bet I even have enough to splurge on a few sandwiches so you two lovely ladies could sit down and eat with me. You and I both know that the supper rush doesn't start until five-thirty at best, Gemma. you've still got nearly an hour until then."

:"I suppose so." She bustled off to the kitchen with his order, leaving Roxy and Markus by themselves, an awkward silence falling in her absence.

"So, uh, why'd you move to Chipping Campden? Usually when people move, it's because they're headed somewhere with more opportunities, but I get the feeling that you weren't searching for this specific waitressing job. Not to mention that you just sound like a city girl. I don't see the appeal—if it were me, I'd want to move away, to find more people who're like me."

She mentally searched for a way to explain her situation that wouldn't make her sound like a crazy person. "There was some...stuff, I guess you could say, going on back home that had become too much for me and after thinking it over very carefully, I decided that the smartest thing to do, in my best interest, would be to get away from all of it and move to somewhere that would allow me to finally relax for the first time in eighteen months."

"Would not being recognised have anything to do with why you chose a town full of muggles as your new home?" Roxy gaped at him. "I vaguely remember you from school, Weasley, and your family's been in the papers for years. But don't worry, I won't tell anyone that you aren't Raegan Willis."

"You're a wizard? You went to Hogwarts? I—I—I...what?"

He laughed, then stuck out his hand for her to shake. "Hello, I'm Markus Harrow, a Ravenclaw from 2019 to 2026 as well as being prefect for sixth and seventh year. Maybe you'd remember me more if I'd played Quidditch but Wolpert stole the only position I was any good at and clung to that position for years—then came Stebbins after that and there was no way I'd ever outdo _him_."

"You play Beater?" Roxy was still struggling to process the fact that Markus _was_ in fact a wizard, but like most Weasleys, she knew all there was to know about Quidditch. "I was a Beater for Slytherin from third to seventh year. Most people expected Freddie to be the Beater because he's bigger and Dad was one while Mum was the Chaser but he always preferred the undying attention to smacking Bludgers at people's heads. I loved it, though."

Most people, upon hearing that tiny, slender Roxy played one of the most physically aggressive and violent positions in Quidditch, would look at her in disbelief or ask how she could possibly ever keep up with the far more imposing players, but Markus only laughed. "Of course you'd pick Beater as position of choice. I don't feel like that should surprise me at all—tiny girl, swinging your bat at your opponents and crushing their skulls."

"You'd be the first then. Even Mum and Dad were never keen on the whole idea and they _knew_ how aggressively I could play!" She chuckled, but they both quickly fell quiet when Gemma returned with a plate of sandwiches and three bowls of tomato soup.

"What'd I miss?" she asked, setting the plates down at a nearby table for the three of them to occupy. "You two seem to be getting along fairly well, which I was expecting anyway, considering how naturally sociable Markus has always been. Dolt used to wave at pretty much anyone who walked past him, even if he didn't know them. I bet, if you really tried, you could even get Mam to love you."

They continued chatting, Gemma and Markus swapping stories about their childhood, while making sure to include Roxy in the conversation as much as possible by asking about her own time growing up. She had to change a few of the details to avoid revealing to Gemma that she was a witch and every blatant omission or revision made Markus chuckle, knowing what she was really saying in her stories when she self-edited.

It almost felt like this was all perfectly normal; she could have lived in Chipping Campden her whole life, always being Raegan Willis, for whom the Weasley family was merely minor celebrities in the paper, the existence of ghosts little more than a whispered faery-tale of what had been.

She had found happiness after all this time.

* * *

Tristan glanced over to her uncomfortably, neither of them saying anything as Gemma and Mrs Atherton went at each other from opposite sides of the table, screaming and flinging anything within reach while everyone else looked on in varying stages of bewilderment and confusion.

Markus, along with his younger sister Charlotte, had appeared at the front door only a few minutes before supper started, clearly wearing what passed for their nicest clothing. It was obvious from the angry look in Mrs Atherton's eyes that, upon Markus' claim that they had been invited to supper, this would not be an easy time for anyone.

She'd set the two at the very end of the table, away from _her_ children; little Charlotte, who was only ten, couldn't seem to quite grasp the tense situation and tried to rush over to kiss her father on the cheek, but Mrs Atherton scowled at the child so darkly that the girl stopped mid-stride, mouth open and chin wobbling, clearly expecting to be yelled at for her near mistake. Markus took his sister's hand and quietly guided her to their seats next to Roxy, who gave the two an awkward smile, just as uncomfortable as everyone else.

Dinner had only gone from down hill from there, filled with scowls, glares, and coughing to relieve the stifling quiet.

"How is your mother, dear?" Mrs Atherton asked Charlotte through gritted teeth, a forced, empty smile on her face. "I've heard she sent your sister off to boarding school, though I couldn't think where she got the money to do so. Typically, those sorts of schools cast quite a bit of money, I've been told. that's why I always stuck to the local school for our children—it does the job at a fraction of the cost."

Charlotte didn't seem to know how to respond, looking to her brother for help. He nodded, explaining, "Well, it's a government-funded school for the most part and what little costs we _do_ have are mostly taken care of by the fact that our mother was a former student there. In fact much of her family went there for school, including me. it's a very good school—we'll be sending Lottie this September."

Roxy tried to stay out of the conversation, knowing that things were tense and it wasn't really her place to be making comments of any kind, not when she wasn't part of the family and had barely lived in Chipping Campden—there was no reason for her to get involved in a discussion of marital infidelity that was not her own family.

Before long, though, Mrs Atherton was dropping snide comments about her husband and his mistress, with practically every other statement containing some sort of barbed insult. Although Mr Atherton seemed content to merely ignore his wife, Gemma was growing more and more red in the face, clearly on the edge of snapping at her mother in the face if the older woman didn't change subjects soon.

Finally, that breaking point came, as Gemma dropped her silverware with a sudden clatter right as her mother was commenting on how rarely she saw Ms Harrow in town these days. "I invited Markus and Lottie to dinner!" Gemma announced, raising her head and looking defiantly at Mrs Atherton. "I invited them to eat with us, pretending to be you since I knew you'd never lower yourself enough to speak to any of our _other_ siblings. And I was right—it's one thing to go after Dad. After all, he's the one who cheated on you and broke your wedding vows. But it's entirely different for you to criticise Markus and especially Lottie like this as though they're somehow at fault for being born. They're just as much our siblings as Julian, the same with Angus and Claire, who you also refuse to let anywhere near the house just on the basis that their mam was the _first wife_. I mean, my god, Mam, you're almost fifty years old now, don't you think it's about time you start acting like it instead of one of those bitches from my class?"

The two Athertons quickly devolved into a screaming match, leaving Imogen to stare silently at her plate, Sebastian to stab at his potatoes, Charlotte to begin crying, and Markus to angrily toss his own silverware onto the table and cross his arms; all the while, Mr Atherton continued eating, entirely unbothered by how everything had fallen apart. Roxy and Tristan continued to stare at each other, equally embarrassed for their new friend.

"I'm sorry," he said at the same time that she tried to tell him, "I wish you didn't have to go through this." Neither were the slightest bit surprised when the first plate went smashing into the wall, even if they shared identical flinching reactions.

"I think Lottie and I ought to be going now," Markus told the two, indicating to his loudly sobbing sister. "We're gonna get some ice cream if you'd like to wait out this storm with us. Abigail's is having a half-off sale to the end of the week and I promised Lottie a cone anyway for doing so well in school as of late."

Tristan and Roxy nodded eagerly and together, the four slipped from the dining room largely unnoticed, as everyone else was still focused on the shouting match between mother and daughter.

The streets of Chipping Campden were empty though well-lit, reminiscent of a scene perhaps fifty years old. Most front lights were on and the curtains were pulled back, allowing glimpses into dining rooms, kitchens, or sitting rooms, where families were gathered or, more tellingly, showed an empty table devoid of family, food, or indeed life of any kind. Occasionally they passed by a solitary diner, a person sitting all alone without anyone with which to share their meal. One such man, at least sixty years old, waved at them as they walked past, a motion which was retuned, though on the inside was the echoing question of how someone could reach the point of being all alone.

"Do you suppose this will ever change?" Tristan asked as they came upon the ice cream parlour. "Mam has such a cruddy view about you, but she's gotten Imogen to think the same way, hating you just because of the circumstances into which you were born, as though you chose this."

"No offence, mate, but your mum's a bitch and she's always been a bitch—I don't think shite like that will suddenly change, not when she's already old enough to be so set in her ways like she is. But it's not like it bothers me any more—your mum hating ours and by extension us has been just one part of my life that I've dealt with and moved past, like those racist fucks in primary school who called me 'chink' or 'jap' and thought they were funny or clever. I don't care about her—haven't in a long time. All that matters is that I have you and Gemma and Seb—oh, and my new friend, Miss Raegan here. I don't need the approval of Beatrix Atherton and I certainly don't need the benefits of Dad." He glanced away, cheeks tinged pink. "It's just for Lottie and Nora that I stoop to such a level. We shouldn't have come tonight, I knew that the second that the phone rang, but I couldn't help myself."

Tristan didn't say anything for a long moment, frowning down at the ground. Ahead of them, the bell to the ice cream parlour jingled and a laughing couple exited the shop. "My mam's a bitch and my dad's a louse. They don't deserve us?" He looked up at Markus, a tense stiffness to his job. "Now let's go get some goddamn fucking ice cream."

* * *

There were no ghosts, no daemons, no existence of magic save for the wand hiding at the bottom of her trunk and the sneaky looks she shared with Markus. Roxy had been erased almost entirely, leaving Raegan Willis in her place. After a month, she only occasionally hesitated before answering to her muggle name. She could walk through the streets of Chipping Campden and only got lost on average. Her job was relatively easy, serving food and cleaning tables, but the owners paid a fair wage and every moment of downtime was spent planning with Gemma, preparing for the day that her home was ready to move into.

They had discovered on one of her days off that the house, which reminded her of a tamer version of the Burrow, was three floors including the attic, with an overgrown garden and no fence. The inside, still under repair, was dusty and covered in sheeting, but they found that there was enough space to make up a second and third bedroom—room for Gemma to move into when it was ready and for Tristan as well as soon as he graduated from college and was an independent.

As she wiped down the last of the tables, the front door jingled. Roxy sighed, preparing her best smile so that she could tell this after hours customer to go fuck themselves as politely as possible. She lifted her head and realised, somewhat shocked, that it was Markus standing at the door, a sheepish grin on his face.

"Sorry, I know you guys are closed for the night, but don't worry, I'm here for something other than a bite to eat." He paused but Roxy merely waved her hands for him to continue. "Well, I heard from Gemma that by next month you'll be living in your own house, independent from the Athertons. Gem says she's coming with you, actually, which I think will be good for her. But, uh, see, the thing is..." Markus paused again, his normal mischievous grin replaced by a slight blush. "I don't care if you're Roxy or Raegan or whatever, I think you're very pretty and I'd like to ask you to go out with me on a date this Valentine's Day. You're a very genuine person and I'm so grateful for that because I don't feel like there's a whole lot of that around these parts."

"I bet it helps that I'm the only witch in Chipping Campden that isn't related to you, right?" teased Roxy as she attempted to formulate a response in her head.

"I suppose that might have a little bit to do with it," replied Markus, chuckling nervously, "but that doesn't change the fact I truly do think that you're amazing, funny, witty, beautiful, charming, friendly, brave, terrific—"

"If I say yes, will you stop listing off every adjective you can think of?" He nodded. "Fine. Sure, Markus, I would love to go on a date with you for Valentine's Day even though the whole holiday is entirely outdated and is only a scam for flower and chocolate companies to guilt men into spending hundreds of pounds on their wives and girlfriends." She couldn't help but laugh at the expression on his face. "That doesn't mean that I won't enjoy myself—only that I expect you to step your game up a bit, Harrow."

"This is another thing I really like about you, how different you are from...from anyone else I've ever met, muggle or magic. You're so honest even when you're being forced to live a lie! I just..." He smiled, almost to himself. "I like you, Roxy or Raegan. I really, truly like you and I hope that you're happy here and, more importantly, that I might be even a small part of while you're happy to be in Chipping Campden."

She attempted a coy smile. "I can neither confirm nor deny whether that's the truth although I can certainly assure you that life here would be much harder to adapt to if I didn't someone as wonderful as you for a friend." Roxy wasn't entirely sure, but she almost thought that Markus blushed at her statement and that made her internally smile.

He shoved his hands into his pockets, still looking almost sheepish, and opened his mouth to reply just as Gemma came out of the kitchen and looked between the two of them, a grin spreading across her face as she realised what was going on.

"I hate to break up the lovebirds but Ade wants me to tell you that we've closed and you'll have to leave for the night. Although there's not much she can do about you waiting for us in the car park and we should be done closing up within twenty minutes." Gemma winked at her half-brother and raised her eyebrows.

"That sounds good to me, being the creepy guy who hangs around in the poorly lit car park, waiting for two beautiful young ladies to come out. That sort of behaviour certainly won't get me arrested." He laughed but headed back to the door. "I'll see you around, Gem, Raegan—I'm sure Mum's worried about me not being home yet and it _is_ getting rather late."

Roxy watched him leave, a smile on her face even if she didn't consciously notice that it was there. His compliments had made her feel good on the inside even if she would never admit it to his face. And another thing she probably would never tell him was that Roxy had considered asking him out soon if he didn't get to her first.

"You look happy," Gemma commented innocently, smirking behind her hand. "You must really like it here in Chipping Campden, yeah?"

The truth was that she _did_ like it here—with good friends and a promising future far away from the problems of her old life, things were finally beginning to look up for her. "I've honestly never been happier," Roxy replied before returning to cleaning up her section of the restaurant.

And the craziest part was that she meant it.

* * *

 _ **Sorry I've been sort of behind recently, guys. I've been dealing with some health issues, as well as being in my first term at university, so it's not been easy.**_

 _ **On a happier note, the epilogue will be going up sometime next week. I appreciate all of you.**_


	74. Epilogue: Dawn departs with woman

_1 February, 2030_

"I've lost both my children now," Angelina said morosely, staring down at her hands. "Twenty years old, both of them, and I have neither any more. Clearly the universe had no desire for me to remain a mother, but to allow me to hold onto them for so long only to rip them away—it's just cruel."

"You do not know zis, it may be zat ze girl merely 'as run away for a leetle while and weel return when she is ready. After all, zere was no body found, no sign of struggle, was zere?"

Angelina looked over to her sister-in-law, recalling when the body of Fleur's younger daughter had been pulled out of the Thames eight years previously, the agonising months between her disappearance and when Dominique had been found. "No," she replied. "They've not yet found a body, no sign that anything happened except that she went to a party and then simply left without a trace. Her stuff was gone from her room, though Aniya and Joanna insist that Roxy had brought nothing with her."

"Zen sere is steel a chance zat she may be found, Ange! You are a muzzer, you must 'ave 'ope zat she weel return to you soon. A girl needs her muzzer, non? And you were close, very close, Roxy misses you, and she weel return when she is ready or, perhaps, when 'arry's forces find her, wherever it is zat she 'as run off to. Zink of poor leetle Violet, who comes back after ten years of being lost. You must believe zat your own daughter weel come back to you. But zis is...a girl trying to locate 'erself—it is why all ze belongings are gone, because she is steel alive out zere, somewhere in ze world."

"Dominique's stuff was all left behind, wasn't it?" She had never asked, feeling that it wasn't her place to do so. But it was different now that they were connected by lost daughters.

"Every single zing except for ze clozes she was found in, as well as ze locket zat I had given 'er for 'er seventeenth birzday, zough ze Aurors tell me zat it was likely stolen by 'er killer or else washed away in ze river. But all of 'er photos and clozes and books had been left untouched from both 'er flat and 'er room at ze Burrow over Chreestmas. It was 'ow I knew."

"How you knew what?"

"'ow I knew zat I would never see my leetle girl again, at least not alive. 'arry and ze ozzer Aurors, zey promise 'oh we weel get 'er back, we weel do anyzing zat we can to bring 'er back', but I knew already zat she was gone for good or else she would 'ave taken 'er zings with 'er, oui?"

The blonde woman wrapped her hands around her cup of tea, her face flushed although she was clearly trying to stay strong. It had never occurred to Angelina before then how similar, yet different, their lives were. Born in the same year, one a Triwizard contestant and the other a mere hopeful; both married Weasleys, one with a still very strong and successful marriage while the other's had fallen apart long before her husband took his life; they'd each lost children at roughly twenty years of age, one daughter and one son.

And now Angelina might have lost her other child just as she acquired custody of a sixteen year old girl who, appearance-wise, would have better fit into Fleur's family of gentle blondes.

"I guess I'm afraid that, no matter the outcome, it will turn out to have been entirely my fault that she ran away and I don't know that I could actually handle that knowledge. she's been gone for a whole month—how long does it take to find yourself, if that's what she's doing?" Angelina shook her head. "She always seemed so self-assured to me, I just can't imagine her having willingly left like this, with no warning."

"You zink it is not in her nature to be rebellious, but zink to who she 'as for parents. Zink to who she 'as for family—a generation of people who do nuzzing but rebel, to work towards righting ze wrongs of zis world."

Fleur got to her feet and walked over to Angelina's tea kettle, refilling both of their cups before coming back to the table, silently offering the teacup to her sister, smiling gently.

She was fifty-three, or would be later that month, but could have passed for Victoire's older sister, with hardly a wrinkle or grey hair to belie her true age. Perhaps it was coming to Britain and leaving behind her family, perhaps it was being a participant in the Triwizard Tournament, or nearly losing her fiance to Fenrir Greyback, or even _actually_ losing her younger daughter to the hands of a never discovered murderer. But Fleur Delacour Weasley could certainly not be mistaken for the beauty without skill or brains that so many—Angelina included—had assumed she was back in 1994.

"My muzzer, she is loving, yes, but does not always understand ze needs of ze daughter. When my fazzer dies in 2004, she tells me 'why do you not come back to France and live in our château again, mon cherie?' I say to her, 'muzzer, I am an adult now, wizz children of my own. I cannot be leaving England just because you are wanting me to. I am 'appy 'ere, wizz my new family and friends. I am better off 'ere in England, zough I do miss you, muzzer'. She became upset at zis and we did not speak again until Louis was born and she contacts me to congratulate my family on having a son. My seester, she stays in France, marries French, 'as wholly French children. She says she is content staying where she is, wizzout adventure or ze excitement of my life. Roxanne—she is more like me zan my seester, non?"

Angelina nodded. "Roxanne _has_ always been a bit of a thrill-seeker, I'll admit that. she'd never allow anyone to tell her what to do, especially if she didn't agree with the instructions."

Her sister-in-law nodded, having expected nothing else. "Dominique, she was same way. Victoire is more like my seester, content to fall closer to ze expectation zat ozzers 'ave for 'er, but Dominique would never settle for such. She would not be 'Bill's daughter', 'Victoire's seester', anyzing zat might be seen as a label. She was too independent for zis world, I am afraid, but it was just in 'er nature to never follow expectations. Roxy—she is ze same way, but less so. A safer amount of rebellion, enough to not follow ze rules but not so much as to be dangerous, I don't zink."

"She'll come back, then?" asked Angelina, taking a sip from her cup. Fleur nodded, but this did little to truly appease Angelina's worry. "But when, Fleur? When will she come back—it's been a month already, how much longer does she need?"

Fleur gave her a graceful shrug, far more graceful than any motion Angelina could have ever hoped to make. "Zat is not anyzing that I can promise you, Angelina, because it is up to Roxanne to decide when she is ready to return 'ome. Perhaps she weel be back tomorrow or in a month or in a year. But I know zat if you chase after 'er and force 'er to come back before she is ready, zen she will only ever 'old you in discontent and anger for taking away 'er freedom."

"So that's just it, then?" Angelina asked despondently, setting down her teacup to let her head drop into her hands. "I do nothing, I just sit here and hope that one day my daughter will return and I can have a normal life again?"

"Yes," Fleur told her calmly but shortly. "You weel wait and you weel be 'appy to wait because it weel mean zat you weel 'ave your daughter wizz you again—somezing I weel never 'ave. so you weel wait—and be glad zat you can."

* * *

 _21 June, 2032_

It had been nearly two and a half years since her adoptive sister disappeared without warning on New Year's Day. And though Chloe had only known Roxy for five brief months, there were still nights when she would fall asleep crying and demanding that the powers of the universe return her sister. It had been her wish for her seventeenth and eighteenth birthday, blowing out candles as her mother looked on and worried that Chloe would also become lost by her twentieth birthday.

And now, 21 June, Chloe would be graduating without her sister to watch. Grandmum Molly had promised that she would get the whole Weasley clan to turn out, from herself at eighty-two to Auntie Rose's daughter, Tabitha, who was only a few months old. Chloe appreciated the gesture, but it wasn't quite the same, knowing that Roxy would not be in the audience.

Nor was it looking very likely that her mother, Angelina, would be there, as she claimed that the school and the graduation ceremony had far too many memories for her.

Over her three years in Hogwarts, Chloe had never really stopped being 'one of those weird kids', but she'd learned how to get past it and stop caring about what other people thought of her. She was still good friends— _best_ friends—with Dean and had founds friends amongst several Hufflepuffs, who didn't care that she had freaky powers. She also made it her goal to look after little Violet, who was about to be a third year in Hufflepuff.

But the real sense of accomplishment was the day that Kara Kanallakan stood up and left behind all of the other Gyrffindor girls to join Chloe, Dean, and little Elianne Scamander, announcing that she was done being an abusive bully to everyone at the school and that she'd rather be happy than popular.

Their dorm-mates didn't take too kindly to this sudden change of heart, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do—Kara refused to take their crap any more and Chloe and Dean simply didn't care. Elianne, who was only just now thirteen, lived in her own world, independent from the opinions and judgements of others.

"I think this will go well," said Kara as she pulled her robes over her head and kicked at the corner of her packed trunk. "I'm glad that we get to be one of Professor Shrever's last groups—and I've written one of the best speeches she'll have ever heard. Do you think that she'll appreciate that I mention her retiring in a few years?" She turned to look at Chloe, who shrugged.

Kara had, somehow, made it to the position of top student of the class of 2032, although she'd nearly lost her ranking following scandals perpetuated by their dorm-mates that Kara had cheated on the NEWTS and most likely cheated her way through school. Thankfully Professor Shrever found nothing to back up these claims and Kara had been allowed to keep her ranking and title, much to her delight.

Chloe herself had done rather well despite only having three years of school to get caught up with everyone else—she would be ranked eighth today, two entire spots above Dean, who might claim to not care about school, but had spent the final term at Hogwarts obsessively checking his ranking over and over again until he was satisfied.

Of her cruel, soon to be former dorm-mates, only Hayden had broken the top fifteenth—she was thirteenth—but Kendall and Hyacinth were still nineteenth and twentieth respectively. They weren't _great_ rankings, but it was still better off than what Kara and Chloe secretly hoped for. It would have been perfect karmic justice to see the girls fail after all the hell they put Kara and Chloe through, especially considering Kara's academic standing and sexuality.

That had been another event that would permanently mark how Chloe saw the world, the day that Kara confessed that she was gay and worried about coming out to her parents. The girls had worked together to officially announce it during the reception of Kara's brother, Kieran. He'd taken their stunt in good humour but warned them against ever attempting to upstage his bridge again. Both he and Kara's parents had taken the news positively, stating that Kara was still family all the same, no matter how she felt.

"What are you thinking about, Chlo?" Kara asked, giving her friend a curious look when she noticed the other girl staring into space. She moved over, placing a soft hand on Chloe's arm. "Are you thinking about _her_ again—your sister?" Kara cocked her head and smiled softly, her eyes filling with sympathy.

Chloe glanced up, mildly shocked at the sudden touch, and her immediate reaction was to shake her head and push Kara's hand away from her. "Roxy's not going to magically appear at the graduation ceremony, I'm not foolish enough to hope or dream of miracles like that. she's been gone for more than two years and, though Mum won't ever accept it, Roxy's probably dead somewhere, her body buried and rotting." At Kara's frown, Chloe elaborated, saying, "my sister loved us—loved _me_. She wouldn't just run away and not speak to any of us ever again. That wouldn't happen." She scowled down at the carpet, a mixture of frustration and sadness filling her. "Mum...she isn't coming today, I don't think. I've written to her, expressing that I want her to be here, but she's told me that she isn't sure she's mentally ready to return to Hogwarts just yet."

Kara shook her head. Her parents would be coming, along with her brother and sister-in-law. She didn't even want to imagine her family not being there to support her. "Is no one else coming? All that family, I'd think at least a few would show up."

"I think Grandmum is doing what she can to get all of my cousins into seats in the crowd, but that's not quite the same thing. I love my gran and all of my cousins, but wouldn't you say that a girl needs her mother for support, or perhaps her sister? I'll have family, but they won't be the family I need to be there."

Her dorm-mate gave her another sympathetic look. "Well, we could be honorary sisters and you and I could share my parents for the day if it makes things even a little bit better. My mum likes you anyway and I'm sure she'd be willing to call you her daughter for the day, if that's what you would like to do."

"As long as you promise to not abandon me out of nowhere like the last two families I've had." Chloe tried to fake a smirk, to play it off like a joke, but she just seemed to be grimacing weakly, and it was obvious there was no humour to her statement.

"I'd never do anything of the sort!" replied Kara, sounding horrified as she patted Chloe on the arm. "I would never abandon you, Chlo—you're pretty much my best friend and friends don't suddenly abandon each other. That's not right."

Roxy had promised to never leave her and her biological mum swore that she'd never wanted to give Chloe away—both of those claims had turned out to be lies, false promises with no real hope. She was wary to trust that any new promises would still be held onto, given the track record Chloe had of being thrown by the wayside, forgotten, unloved, and unwanted.

"Come on, Chloe," Kara told her, taking her friend's hands. "I want to grab something to eat before the ceremony starts and you know the kitchens will close soon enough, with everyone pretty much gone from the school by now."

The smaller blonde nodded and followed after her friend, still wondering if she would have anyone in the crowd today, if anyone cared about her at all.

* * *

 _22 August, 2032_

Looking up from her bed, Hermione smiled weakly at her four month old granddaughter, stroking the infant's fuzzy head before falling into another burst of coughing, pulling away from the child to press a handkerchief over her mouth. When she finished pulling the cloth away, it was stained red—unburdened by the sight of her own blood, Hermione merely discarded it in a waste bin full of bloodied cloths that sat next to her bed.

"She's getting bigger," said Hermione hoarsely, raising her head to look at Rose, who had pulled Tabitha away from the bed when the coughing fit began. "In a few month's time, she'll be walking and talking and raising hell. Soon enough you'll be sending her off to Hogwarts for the first time, wondering where all the time went."

She coughed weakly again, covering her mouth with her hand when she couldn't find a clean handkerchief. Rose waved her wand and Vanished the blood from her mother's fingers before Summoning several more clean cloths from the other room, setting them on the night stand in a neat little pile.

"We've taken to calling her Neeny as of late, mostly because the twins are having a difficult time pronouncing 'Tabitha'. I've no idea where Neeny of all things came from but that's where we are right now and I don't really see the point in fighting such a small issue." Rose looked down at the infant in her arms, rocking her back and forth a few times before turning to set the little girl in a cot at the foot of the bed.

Hermione considered the nickname, repeating it in her head. "I like it—better than Tabby, which would make her sound like a cat. Neeny is unique."

Her chest hurt with every intake of air. She'd never smoked before—ironic, considering that many women with cervical cancer had contracted it through smoking—but she was fairly certain that this was what a smoker must feel like when trying to breath. Her doctor told her that metastases had spread to her lung, a sign of advancement in her illness that greatly diminished Hermione's chance at survival.

In short, she was dying, and there was no amount of magic or muggle treatment that could possibly save her. It was a fat that Hermione, after careful consideration, had accepted, though the same could not be said for her husband or children.

Ron was running around in every spare moment that he had, searching for some new treatment or cure, shelling out quite a bit of money to send out requests all over the world for someone who could help cure Hermione even in her final stages. She had warned him against spending all of their funds trying to prevent the inevitable and though he swore he wouldn't, Hermione had to cut him off after finding out he'd handed over nearly fifteen hundred galleons for the hope of an experimental potion.

If anything, her children were handling it even worse. Though they had mostly matured into full-functioning adults, it would seem that neither Rose nor Hugo were quite ready to give up on the idea of their mother being an undefeatable, immortal war hero. They spoke to her as though she still had decades left to live, rather than the weeks or months at best proposed to her by her doctor. Days, in the worst possible scenario. Violet was handling it even worse; she was thirteen and was distraught that she'd only had her mother back for three short years.

"We'll be going s a group to see Faith and Remy off to Hogwarts, if you're feeling up to it," said Rose, looking at her mother with barely contained sorrow, holding back tears that threatened to come whether she wanted them or not. "And Han's been talking about maybe looking into adopting again. She thinks Tabitha should have a sibling."

"Don't you think you ought to wait a little while before jumping into that process again? You got lucky the first time."

"I know—I've tried arguing that cousins make for good pseudo-siblings. And Hugo is bound to settle down and start his own family eventually. I don't know how serious it is but he's mentioned Essie Chandler a few times now."

"Mm. Hannai is an only child, is she not? She probably remembers those early years where the only friends you had were the ones you came up with yourself. I suspect she worries that Tabitha will grow up the same way."

Rose could tell, from her mother's pursed lips, to the way she kept sticking to trivial topics of conversation that the older woman was trying to keep something back, new information about her health that she didn't want Rose to know. It was a topic of contention in their family. "Has your doctor said anything recently about possible new treatments that might help? I read something in a magazine recently that said—"

"My doctor told me the same thing he told me the last time you asked, that I don't have very much longer and it'd be wise that I, along with the rest of my family, come to terms with this fact and begin preparing for what will need to be taken care of after I pass away."

Her daughter frowned, glancing towards the cot as her mother began another coughing fit. She didn't care for this sort of talk. It felt far too...defeatist, like her mum was giving up much too easily. Why wouldn't she fight?

"I was much the same way you are now when I lost _my_ mother nineteen years ago, scared to accept the truth that she was dying. I didn't make it easy for her in those final days because I was frightened that she so easily accepted her own mortality. You were seven, Hugo five. I didn't know how to explain cancer to you at such a young age—I didn't want to have to explain death as well. I had hoped that you would not do the same to me, that you would learn from my mistakes." Her tone was not chastising, only upset.

"You're my mother, though," Rose replied, her voice cracking. "I don't want to lose my mother, not when you still have so much life to live. It's not—"

"Fair? Is that what you were going to say? Rose, how many times have we had this conversation about fairness? Is it any more fair that I lost three of my children either in the womb or in infancy? Is it any more fair that Scorpius' mother has been sick her whole life, hanging onto life by a thread at some points? Is it any more fair to those who died during the Battle of 1998 or the one you lot fought in a few years ago?"

"I know, Mum. But I don't want to lose you. I don't want Tabitha to grow up without a grandmother like I did."

Hermione took her daughter's hands and looked her intently in the eyes. "I know you don't, sweetheart, and I know it'll hurt but the important thing is to do your best to carry on my memory, by carrying on the work and effort I put in to make this world a better place. If you can just do that, and raise Tabitha in the exact same way, then my passing won't be as sad and it certainly won't be pointless."

She didn't mean to sound like she was preaching—Hermione had been preparing for her death since the cancer began spreading eighteen months ago. There were letters set aside fro every member of her family and she had words in mind, little semi-speeches. She was ready for the last moments, for her final days, whenever that might be. Death would not come with pain or fright. At long last, Hermione understood why her own mother had been able to pass away in peace.

* * *

Later that night, Hermione Granger-Weasley greeted Death as a familiar friend, smiling calmly. Hers was a peaceful sleep.

* * *

 _19 April, 2033_

After three years of dating, Markus knew it was time to take the next step in their relationship. he'd had a string of girlfriends during his teenage years but never a girl like Roxy. No witch, no muggle, had ever made the sort of impact that she had and he knew she would be the one from the moment that he walked into The Garden Room and saw her for the very first time.

There was no one else who understood how he felt—about having to hide his magic, about being distant from his dad, about the constant desire to show the world that he was more than just a bastard with a wand and the burning question in the back of his mind about whether he ought to have been born in the first place.

Roxy was the love of his life and he desperately hoped that she felt the same way, that she loved him enough to say yes, to agree to spend the rest of her life with him.

He'd planned this night for an entire month, saving up the money from his two jobs so that he could afford a nice night for her. The ring came from his grandmother, an old family artefact dating back to the fifteenth century and was one of the few remaining signs from when his family had money and power. The rest had either been sold or lost to time. But his grandmother's ring had sat safely in a box, locked behind glass for much of Markus' life; his mother, still in love with Rupert Atherton, never married and therefore never wore the ring, though Markus was quite sure his father would have only bought a muggle ring with no meaning or history if he'd ever had the guts to propose or divorce either of his wives in favour of Markus' mother.

He'd sworn to never be like his father, to only marry when he was ready and when he had found love. He would never divorce his wife and he would certainly never do her the disservice of cheating on her. If he married, it would be for life.

And Roxy was that women, beautiful, clever, both the sweetest person he knew and the most honest, calling him out when he was wrong and admitting her own mistakes often before he even knew they existed.

Tonight would be the night that everything changed. Tonight would be the night that his life was complete.

"So are you ever going to tell me where it is that we're actually going and why you made me dress up like this?" Roxy asked, scowling down at the green dress that she'd borrowed from a co-worker and temporarily charmed to fit her. Dresses didn't particularly suit her, even if Markus personally thought that they made her look absolutely gorgeous.

"Well, I figured that you and I haven't had too many fancy dates in the three years we've been dating and I want to treat my girlfriend like the queen she is, so I am taking you to a fancy dinner, which turn requires equally fancy clothing, hence why I asked you to get a dress."

"Hm." Roxy pursed her lips, thinking it over. "A fancy restaurant within walking distance of my house—so upscale that it requires the nicest dress I could get my hands on." She glanced at him. "Unless you planned on Apparating us to our dinner location?"

Markus shook his head, smiling coyly. "You'll see," he told her and kept walking. The whole night had, somehow, ended up costing more than he expected but it was all worth it to see her smile at the end. It was his intention to amaze her like something out of a romantic film, the cost be damned. If she said yes, Markus would be willing to carry any cost, no matter the price.

They came upon his house, where Gemma stood in heels and a short skirt, her blouse sparkling with every move she made. She smiled at them, holding up two printed menus as Markus led Roxy to the bottom step.

"Welcome to _Chataeu du Harrow_ ," Gemma greeted them, eyes shining brightly. "Do you have a reservation with us tonight?" She indicated a legal pad tucked within an old, black binder. There were only two names written down—Markus and Raegan Harrow, 6:30pm.

Roxanne looked at her boyfriend, befuddled. "Markus? What's going on? What're you guys doing? This—this is your _house_."

"Two under Harrow for 6:30, please," Markus told Gemma, then turned to kiss Roxy on the cheek. "Come on, dear, our fancy dinner is awaiting us. You don't want to stand outside and catch a cold, do you?" He smiled gently at the absolute confusion on her face, knowing that bewilderment would turn to shock and, if everything went correctly, elation.

Gemma led the couple inside, heading to the sitting room, which had been cleared out for the evening and replaced with a dark wooden table and two matching chairs. Silver-tinted lights hung on the wall and Sebastian Atherton, now an eighteen year old music student, began playing soft classical music on his violin. A candle sat on the table next to a vase full of roses. From the kitchen, Ms Harrow and Tristan peeked out from where they were nearly done preparing dinner.

"My sisters wanted to help out tonight, but I reminded them very strongly of the importance of staying at school," Markus told her, a gleam in his eyes. "They send all of their love and affection, though, so at least you have that."

Sixteen year old Nora and thirteen year old Charlotte were very fond of their brother's girlfriend, treating her like something between an older sister and a second mother, one that bought them sweets for the holidays and told them fantastical stories of a world were unicorns were still plentiful and ghosts were friendly spirits that enjoyed helping the living.

"You did all of this for me?" Roxy asked, tears coming to her eyes, though she did not let them spill, even in happiness. "I don't understand, this had to cost money and effort, why did you do all of this just for me?"

Markus didn't think he'd ever be able to wipe the stupid grin off his face. "I did this for you, Raegan," he winked at his use of her false name, "because I _love_ you. You are the most amazing, most wonderful woman I have ever had the honour of meeting, let alone being given the privilege to date you. I can't imagine ever spending another day in my life away from you because I could tell, from the moment I met you, that you were the only person in the world who could ever truly complete me. You make me more than happy—you make me ecstatic, out of my mind with joy. You're my reason for getting up in the morning. Raegan, I love you with all of my heart, which is why I am ready to ask you that most important question." Getting down on one knee, he pulled the box out from his pocket and looked up at her, taking a deep breath. "Raegan Willis, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?"

* * *

 _13 August, 2035_

As work ended for the afternoon, Roxy slipped her engagement ring out of her apron, settling it back on her finger, where she briefly admired it before hurrying to put everything away so she could head home for the day.

The home she had purchased more than five and a half years ago had drastically changed over they years. There was herself and Markus in the bedroom on the main floor; Tristan and his long-time girlfriend Camille Collings were in one the room floor while Gemma and her fiance, Nathaniel Attenborough, took the second room along with their seventeen month old son, William. On the top floor, Sebastian occasionally slept on a cot when he wasn't busy performing and eighteen year old Nora had moved in shortly after graduation.

"You got the cake for me, right?" Gemma asked in a bubbly voice, grinning over at her sister-in-law. "It's simply not a party if there's no cake. After all, you only turn twenty-five once, isn't that right? So today should be special and that means cake!"

Roxy shook her head at Gemma's excitable nature. "The cake is in the fridge, like it was when you asked me this morning. Besides, what's so important about turning twenty-five? I did it without ceremony and everything was perfectly fine. All it means is that you're that much closer to thirty—a horrifying thought in my opinion, not something to be celebrated."

"Oh hush. You're just anti-birthday is all, that's _your_ birthday. Cake is absolutely essential and _every_ birthday is important." Gemma winked at her friend, grabbing her purse and throwing Roxy her wallet. "Nate and I finally settled on a date, you know—early February."

"That's good. Lovely winter wedding, is that what you're planning?" She tucked her wallet into her pocket, pretending that she hadn't noticed Gemma's less than subtle hint to the fact that Roxy and Markus had been engaged for two years with no sign of getting married any time soon. "You could probably get William to be the ring bearer, the whole audience would get a kick out of his chubby, cute little face as he stumbles down the aisle."

"I'd like that." They were in the car park now and Gemma, suddenly falling quiet, twisted the engagement ring on her finger. "I, er, have a few things that I need to get done, but I'll see you tonight at the party, okay? Tell Markus I said to stay away from my son. Every time they're in the same room, I swear he gives that boy half a kilo of sugar."

She laughed and the two women parted ways, Roxy headed in the direction of their house, a small bit of doubt tugging at the back of her mind. This had been happening a lot more often recently, Gemma giving feeble excuses about other responsibilities and commitments before taking off for hours at a time. But like the marriage situation, it was just one more thing that was never brought up, neither wanting to rock the boat too much.

Though how was she supposed to get married when Raegan Willis technically didn't exist but none of her friends in Chipping Campden had any idea who Roxy Weasley was or that she could do magic? One day, when she could safely remove all evidence of her past life, perhaps Markus could marry Raegan, but marrying Roxy was simply not a viable option.

The wedding would have to wait for now.

Too caught up in her own thoughts, Roxy missed the dark hair and twinkling brown eyes of the man standing on the side of the road, but when a red-headed woman called her name, she looked to the direction of permanently twenty-one year old Lily Evans Potter, who waved politely at her.

"What the fuck?" Roxy managed to squeak out, finally noticing the dozen or so ghosts that had been following after her for several minutes—James Potter, Freddie Weasley, Fred Weasley, a man with wild black hair, a pink-haired woman that was trailed by an older gentleman that looked a bit like a sandy Teddy Lupin, along with several others.

James Potter winked at her, shaking his head in amusement at her total bewilderment. "I told you we'd be back some day, didn't I? It's time for you to come home now, Roxy. You've built up a nice fantasy here but the faery-tale is over. It's time to step back into reality."

"What the actual fuck? Why—where—what? Why now, after five years? Why let me leave at all, to have this wonderful life and meet these wonderful people if you were only going to rip it all away from me in the end? I have friends here, a fiance—I don't _want_ to go back, not after all this time, not when I'm finally happy."

"The Wizarding World requires your presence once more, Roxy. It is _essential_ that you come home immediately—"

"Essential? Bloody essential?! What's so important about me, huh? Why do you need me? And what about Markus? Am I supposed to just leave him behind, run off to have fantastical adventures again and hope I don't die in the process? How does that make sense?"

In a cold voice, James Potter replied, "You seemed to have no problem doing it to your family five years ago, I don

to see why it would be hard to do it all again. But no," he shook his head, frowning, "it would be better that you bring him with you. Tell him that you're finally ready to return home and you want him with you, he'll believe that, having wanted to believe to see the true life of Roxy Weasley since he first saw you living a muggle existence."

"There is no 'true life' of Roxy Weasley because that woman is dead. I was forced to smother her in order to be happy and I'm not willing to resurrect a dead girl just because you told me to."

One of the spirits stepped forward, making Roxy gasp in horror and back away. Her aunt, one of the greatest women Roxy had ever known was standing in front of her as transparent as all the other ghosts. She'd known Aunt Hermione was diagnosed with a muggle illness several years ago but she never considered that it was bad enough to die from.

"You started your battle in an attempt to stop the likes of Trinh Itawa and her mother, did you not?" Hermione raised her eyebrows at her niece, who nodded weakly. "Then is it not your duty to complete that goal? The Itawa have been quiet over the last five years, which is why you were allowed to leave in the first place. Now, though, come whispers from Phuong Itawa, who's beloved assistant and scapegoat Rafael McClane has been released from prison. Her granddaughter is five years old and showing signs of the same powers ans her parents. And worst of all is talk that Khiro may be putting forces on the path of freeing Trinh Itawa in order to speed up his plans of world destruction."

Her head spinning with all of this sudden information, Roxy was still clear-headed enough to realise that these spirits were right. She had no choice but to go back home and start the Circle once more in case the Itawas were to try anything else to end them all.

"Fine," she told them, nodding shortly. "I'll get Markus and we'll pack our things to head out tomorrow. But today is my friend's birthday and I won't leave without celebrating this event, I don't care what you say."

"You might want to rethink that idea," said Lily Potter, nodding her head in the direction of Roxy's house, where she could see in the distance that Markus was standing in the front yard talking to a woman with a long auburn braid.

Even from where she stood, Roxy could easily recognise her cousin Lucy. "What? Why is she here? Did you bring her here as well, is that it? Or did she bring you lot here?"

"She's come to take you home," the spirits told her, speaking in one voice, the sound of it so eerier that the hair on her arms stood up. "Brought by the powers that run the world, she has arrived to ensure your safe return in order to enact the future that you are bound to fulfil."

Now totally freaked out, Roxy merely nodded mutely and sprinted towards her home, calling out Markus' name and causing him and Lucy to turn in her direction. Lucy broke out into a grin and waved at her cousin, relieved to have finally found the younger woman after five long years.

Once again life had changed for Roxy; as quickly as she had settled into Chipping Campden, she was being pulled from the town, everything turned upside down and ripped at the seams. Her peaceful holiday was over whether she wanted it to or not—it was time for Roxy to return to her old life to continue the war for humanity.

It was time to go home.

* * *

 _ **And that's it, ladies and gentlemen. Roxy's story is over, at least for the most part. But don't worry, if you've grown attached to the 'Complications Universe' and my interpretation of the next generation, I will be continuing the story at a later date, with a new main character.**_

 _ **Thank you for your loyal readership. Good-night.**_


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